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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26981857">Someone in Some Future Time Will Think of Us</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunkenLucidDreams/pseuds/SunkenLucidDreams'>SunkenLucidDreams</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Oxenfree (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Coming of Age, F/F, Flashbacks, Jonas and Alex sibling bond, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Cancer, Mild Gore, Nona isn't a background character, Psychological Horror, Survival Horror, Time Travel, Ya'll played the game, everybody has stuff to work through, horror stuff on that level</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:33:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,757</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26981857</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunkenLucidDreams/pseuds/SunkenLucidDreams</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>October 25, 1943. Maggie screams when she hears the noise: A resounding, unnatural, and unexpected thump against the glass window on the Tower door. The radio receiver drops from her hand, but when she looks at the window all she sees is her own terrified expression. Then the lighting flashes, and the silhouette of a girl stands against the storm, palm hard-pressed to the glass. <br/>“Nona?” </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It is the 265th loop; the last opportunity to lay to rest an old wrong. Something happened between those four friends in 1943, when once they enjoyed a wedding together, a celebration of life: Francis Salter, Maggie Adler, Anna Shea, and a weapons technician of the USS Walter Roy. Both past and present, they are a hero complex, a chipped shoulder, a bad trip and a broken record... The last of them is yet to be determined.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Clarissa/Nona (Oxenfree), Margaret "Maggie" Adler/Anna Shea, Nona/ Self-Confidence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Loop 264</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is my love letter to the creators of my favorite game. Spoilers are in the tags!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Here we go again.</em>
</p><p><br/>“It used to be a military base. Well, it used to be a ranching thing, then it was turned into an army thing, then it became a bird thing and a museum or whatever…” Ren goes on, not noticing the shift that has landed us here, again, just when we had finally gotten on this boat to leave Edward’s Island. Jonas and I look at each other. He brings up his hand into a fist towards me, then lifts his middle finger. I smile and salute back. We’re Awake; “Awake” being a word we started to use so we could recognize which of us knew we were back in time, back in the loop.</p><p><br/>“Alex? Hey, Still with us?” Ren asks, for the thousandth time.</p><p><br/>“Are you, Ren?” I ask.</p><p><br/>Ren raises an eyebrow at me. “Uh….okay. Kinda being weird, Alex. Any way, Jonas, are you all moved in?” Ren doesn’t give the salute. He never does. Doesn’t want to, I think.<br/>“I just got in this morning.” Jonas moves from where he’s perched at the front of the boat, giving me a sympathetic smile from over Ren’s shoulder. Ren has never tried to remember what happens. He prefers to start the cycle without knowing what to expect, without handling any of the burden of knowing.</p><p><br/>“And how did her mom meet your dad, exactly?” Ren hoists himself against the guard rail, his sneakers pushing against the bottom rung and his arms clinging to the top one. He has a mischievous, almost mean expression on his face. Our first time to Edward’s Island, I hadn’t noticed it.</p><p><br/>“It’s not really worth going into,” Jonas says. Ren frowns- or, I guess pouts is more like it. Ren looks back to me, standing in the archway towards the inside of the boat, and mouths, <em>“Your new step-brother is weird.”</em></p><p><br/>After so long I notice myself standing in this same spot on the ship’s deck; a way to feel grounded, feel a sense of continuity that isn’t being forced on me in endless loops. A choice to stand here and feel the evening wind caress my cheeks with cold palms as the boat slows, approaching the docks of Edward’s Island. I breathe in the smell of the water, musky and deep and heavy. I look forward at the grey cliffs, the evergreen forests, Harden’s tower in the distance blinking a persistent red light into the dark. <em>Go away</em>, it says, <em>don’t come. Leave isn’t possible.</em></p><p><br/>Ren pipes up, “Hey, we should take a picture. All of us.”</p><p><br/>***</p><p>The boat pulls in, and I force my feet to cross the threshold onto the wet, mossy wood of the dock. I take a deep breath and feel a strong hand on my shoulder. Jonas looks down at me and gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. I nod, letting out a final shaky breath before following Ren towards main street. “Wanna smoke?” Jonas asks, and I nod. He lights my cigarette for me, and I take a pull. I let the smoke roll around my mouth before blowing it out into the air.</p><p><br/>“I, uh…didn’t know you smoked.” Ren says, only barely containing his ‘judge-y’ face.</p><p><br/>“Yeah, well. I’m full of surprises.” I say with a sardonic smile.</p><p>Ren looks between the two of us, his eyebrows knitting together. “You guys are being weird.” We continue walking, Ren giving his “Welcome to the Island” tour. We get to the trash bin, and Jonas and I move automatically to roll it towards the fence overlooking the cliffs. I fade in and out of the conversation with Ren.</p><p><br/>“You’d be okay with never leaving? Just being here, all the time?”</p><p><br/>“You don’t always get to choose, so I guess…enjoy the view?” I reply. Jonas looks down, a heaviness settling on his shoulders. No. We don’t get to choose.</p><p><br/>“Jonas, did you know that a little birdy told me that our Alex here is thinking of going out of state to college?”</p><p><br/>Our lines repeat. Hundreds of times Ren and I have some variation of the same, condescending conversation, always ending the same way.</p><p><br/>“Yeah, this’ll be fun, don’t worry. Even if Alex is a listless drifter ruining her own life.”</p><p><br/>***<br/>We meet Clarissa and Nona at the cliffs. Clarissa covertly salutes us with a thin, manicured middle finger, but I’m sure some part of her means it. Nona sticks to the script, without a salute. Like Ren, it seems like she prefers not knowing. So… she doesn’t. She tried a few times, towards the beginning. Not anymore.</p><p><br/>We all crawl over the ledges towards the beach. Jonas and I go for the cooler in the corner. I offer a beer to Clarissa, but she doesn’t take it from me. I put it back. I crack the lid off my bottle with my teeth and drink in large gulps. Over time you have to appreciate the small gifts of the Island, like alcoholism without liver damage or smoking without lung decay. A full reset by morning. We all move towards the fire, Jonas and I standing next to each other in the sand across from Clarissa, who settles on a beach towel.</p><p>Clarissa doesn’t offer any of her lines to Nona, so Ren is the one to bring up Truth or Slap.</p><p><br/>“We could inaugurate Jonas! Ease him into tonight’s festivities. Who first?”</p><p><br/>Clarissa, who has been silent for most of the night, pulls her knees up to her chest. “I’ll go first.”</p><p><br/>Ren's smile takes on a more plastic quality. “O-oh, great, Clarissa. Ask somebody something.”</p><p><br/>“Alex.”</p><p><br/>I get a pit in my stomach, and my hand freezes around the neck of my bottle. Ren seems to suck in a tight breath, anticipating a fight.</p><p><br/>“Why did you do it?” Her voice is quiet, but Clarissa’s eyes glower across the fire at me, and I can’t tell if it’s the smoke, or if she has tears welling in her eyes.</p><p><br/>“I’m sorry.” I say, my voice breaking. Like a firecracker she stands, facing me with shaking fists.</p><p><br/>“WHY!?” She screams, and Nona winces. I move my mouth to speak, but my throat is dry.</p><p><br/>“I don’t know.”</p><p><br/>She storms across the sand and slaps me hard across the face before Jonas can stop her. “Whoa! What the hell Clarissa?” He says, putting out a hand to distance me from her.</p><p>Clarissa’s voice becomes raspy and dark, and she curls her shoulders inward, moving her fists back to her sides. “You don’t know. <strong>None</strong> of you know. But Alex, you <strong>do</strong>. You know and you <strong>lie</strong> about it. You lie to Jonas, and you lie to yourself. But you can’t lie to me.”</p><p><br/>“Clarissa, Michael isn’t Alex’s fault.” Ren says softly, but he doesn’t meet Clarissa’s eyes. Clarissa scoffs. “No. No, it’s never Alex’s fault, is it?” Clarissa shoots a glare around at the shocked faces of our group, before storming off into the night. After some awkward silence and drinking around a tense fire, Ren invites us to let go of the ‘bad vibe’ by seeing the weird frequency rocks. Before Jonas pushes me over the fence, he pulls me aside. “I thought she was Awake…why is she still stuck on blaming you for Michael? Didn’t we already settle that, like, 100 loops ago?” Jonas whispers, finally relaxing his defensive stance. I shrug my shoulders, the beer no longer sitting well in my stomach.<br/>***<br/>Jonas and I had tried many times to just not see these rocks, not bring out the radio, not open the portal. I wanted to throw the radio into the ocean, stomp it under my foot, refuse to follow Jonas into those caves. I thought, maybe if we didn’t do anything, the loops would stop. But they didn’t. Something compels me to turn the dial, to start this horror cycle over again and again, like I’m already possessed, and I don’t have a choice. Like someone else is making these choices for me, like, Fate, maybe? Sometimes things feel a little different. Maybe I turn left instead of right, sometimes I try to rekindle my relationship with Ren and sometimes I spend as much time away from him as possible. In some loops Nona and I become close, and some it feels like I don’t know her at all. A definitive destination with varying routes. But now I’m standing in front of this pile of rocks, and I…feel different. I feel a choice. A real choice. Un-defined.</p><p><br/>“Just turn the dial left or right until you start hearing some weirdness,” Ren says, taking a bite out of his ‘magic’ brownie.</p><p><br/>“No.” I say boldly. Ren juts out his lower lip.</p><p><br/>“Uh, that’s like the whole reason we’re here? Just play the rocks, Alex. I promise it’s-”</p><p><br/>“No,” I say again, but this time with a small laugh. Jonas’s head shoots up and turns towards me. “Say that again!”</p><p><br/>“No! No, I won’t play this damn radio.” I laugh, and feel a glimmer of hope in my chest, warm and unfamiliar. But then, very quickly, I feel pain run through my fingers and up my arms, the radio glowing red in my hands.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Loop 265</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Oxenteam finds themselves in a new loop...and the last.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“OW! Fuck, that hurt.” I open my eyes and feel a chilly breeze on my face. The boat to Edward’s Island cuts through the choppy, dark waters, the cliffs looming in the distance.</p><p>“Alex. What…what just happened? I remember we were by the rocks, and and the ‘magic’…that must be it, this has gotta be a bad trip.” Ren’s voice wavers, his eyes wide and darting around the boat. Jonas has a similar expression. “Is… is everyone awake?” Jonas asks, lifting a middle finger.</p><p><br/>“Uh…yeah, unfortunately.” Clarissa steps out from the seated area of the boat, middle finger raised. Nona follows behind, saluting us with an expression of dread.</p><p>“What the hell is going on?” I put a hand to my head. I reach into my pocket, my body going rigid. “The radio’s gone.” I murmur, at the same time Ren says, “What the hell are you and Nona doing here? I thought- you guys were <em>definitely</em> supposed to be on the Island already. And why is everybody flipping each other off? Also…what the hell was in that brownie?”</p><p><br/>“Ren!” Jonas interrupts sharply, cutting him off, before turning to me. “What happened to the radio?”</p><p><br/>“I don’t know! It’s always in my pocket, every time. It’s supposed to be in here and it’s not and I don’t know where it is...”</p><p>Clarissa shrugs. “Good. That thing is what started all of this.”</p><p><br/>“Something…changed.” Nona says from behind us in a quiet voice.</p><p><br/>“What the hell is going on with all of you!?” Ren yells, all of us turning to look at him.</p><p><br/>“Oh, that’s right. Burnout boy hasn’t made himself remember yet. Someone explain it to him,” Clarissa sighs with a non-committal air, looking over her nails like she’s unbothered by the whole thing. But looking closer, her jaw is tense. I shake the nerves off my face and approach Ren, taking a deep, steadying breath. “Ren, we’ve done this before. We are stuck in a loop that lasts from now until tomorrow morning, right when we are on the boat leaving the island. While we’re here, some…pretty messed up stuff happens.”</p><p><br/>Ren pops a hip and crosses his arms. “And, what? All of the rest of you remember this loop?” None of us answer. “Well, why don’t I remember?” Ren huffs.</p><p><br/>“Because you’re a coward,” comes Clarissa’s cold tone from the back. “You’ve always been a coward. And probably always will be one. We take on the weight of remembering so you don’t have to. So. Maybe a thank you is in order.”</p><p><br/>Ren is shell-shocked, his eyes confused and hurt. “I…you guys are pranking me, right? This is a messed up prank. It’s really not funny. I expect that from Clarissa, but you, Alex? Really?”</p><p><br/>Clarissa rolls her eyes, running a hand over her red bob to keep it from whipping in the wind. “Use your brain. We don’t have time-travel powers. Well, not the kind that we can use to prank you with. Because you’re right, we <em>were</em> just on the beach and now we’re <em>not</em>. Look, guys, it might be weird and different than the usual torment but this place has always fucked with us, so I don’t know what the big deal is.”</p><p><br/>“The big deal is that it’s never been this different. Besides, I… I don’t remember the rest of last night.” I pause, cracking my knuckles nervously. “I always stay awake, but… no, I’m just as confused as the rest of you. I don’t know what shifted but something…definitely did.” My voice peters out at the end.</p><p><br/>“So…what now?” Nona pipes up.</p><p><br/>I face the Island, its sheer dark cliffs somehow more sinister than they were before.</p><p><br/>“I guess we try something new.”</p><p><br/>***<br/>We go back towards the beach in relative silence, but Ren sidles up to me while we navigate.</p><p><br/>“So…like, how long have we been doing this?”</p><p><br/>“Doing what?”</p><p><br/>“Just- going in circles. Starting over again.”</p><p><br/>I cross my arms over my chest. “Too many.”</p><p><br/>“Jesus, Alex, just give me a real number.”</p><p><br/>I stop abruptly, groaning heavily into the sky.</p><p><br/>“I don’t know, Ren! I didn’t even start really remembering each loop for a while, I only had bits and pieces, only a sense that something was wrong. I don’t know how many loops that took. But once I started taking count, it was fifty loops before Jonas started remembering too, even longer before Clarissa and Nona started. And you…you never even tried.”</p><p><br/>Ren scoffs in disbelief. “God, how could you be mad at me over this? This isn’t my fault!” Ren’s indignant voice grates on my last nerve, and I move away from him.</p><p><br/>“Whatever, Ren. At the end of this you’ll probably choose to forget this too, so. I wouldn’t dwell on it.”</p><p>There is no bonfire to light our way across the sand. I take out my flashlight, scanning it across the ground. We approach the fence, and Jonas hoists everyone over it. “There it is!” I follow my flashlight beam to a radio, laying out on the sand. Right where I had been before. But it isn’t my radio. “Don’t touch it!” Ren calls out.</p><p><br/>“I won’t! Obviously, jeez.” I crouch next to it. “This… this is like the one we always find in the parks building. We usually don’t pick that up until later. What happened to my radio?”</p><p><br/>“What do we do?” Nona asks, staying a little farther behind the rest of us who have formed a small circle around it.</p><p><br/>“It looks dead,” Jonas says, then we jump back when the radio screeches to life. The dial moves of its own accord, settling on 140.1.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“CAVE.HELP.CAVE.ALEX.”</strong>
</p><p><br/>“Holy shit.” Nona mumbles, taking another step back.</p><p><br/>Jonas rubs his temple. “Did…did the Sunken just ask for help?”</p><p><br/>“Who are the Sunken?” Ren stammers, clearly shaken.</p><p><br/>“Do you think the Sunken are just trying to mess with us?” I ask Jonas, but Clarissa is the one who answers. “Yeah, Alex. That’s kind of what they do. You go in there, you try to “help”, and you just start it all off again. But you’re going to do it anyway, so. Why bother trying to convince you otherwise?”</p><p><br/>“What else can we do!?” I snap, slapping my hands on the tops of my thighs. “I’ll take ideas, Clarissa.”</p><p><br/>“We could take Maggie Adler’s stupid boat, we could sit and wait for morning, we could swim to land, I don’t really care. But that’s not what’s going to happen, is it?”</p><p><br/>I turn away from her, looking down at the radio. 140.1. <em>This is wrong. This isn’t supposed to happen.</em> I run my hand over my bangs, moving them out of the way as I crouch over the very out of place radio. <em>But why is it happening? What changed? What’s so important about 140.1, right now, right here?</em></p><p><br/>“Guys, I…I think we should go down there.”</p><p><br/>Clarissa throws up her arms. “What did I tell you? Here she goes again, <em>Savior Alex</em>.” she seethes.</p><p><br/>“I know…I know it sounds crazy, but Clarissa’s right, we can’t waste this chance to do something different.”</p><p><br/>“And how is going into the cave with the radio changing the course of things?” Clarissa questions, and I see Nona nod her agreement as she moves closer to Clarissa. Even Jonas seems to be backing off from my idea. I point to the dial. “Look… it’s using the Cardinal station. <em>Maggie’s</em> station. I don’t know...that seems important. Something’s connecting.”</p><p><br/>"Like what?" Jonas asks, rubbing his fingers over a stressed temple.</p><p><br/>“Everything, but… I don’t know what this means. That’s what I’m going to find out.” I pick up the radio and stand up from my crouch, my teal ponytail swaying with my sudden movement. “Who’s with me?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Last Game</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Time for Weird Cave Stuff (TM)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Yeah…so far, all of this feels <em>very</em> familiar,” Jonas sighs, his boots slapping down on the slanted path towards the cave. I roll my eyes behind him. “Yeah, well, it’s not like I can force them to come down here-”</p><p><br/>“Hey, wait up!” Nona’s voice echoes, followed by the complaining grunts of Clarissa scaling wet rock. I turn to see Nona sliding down the entryway towards us. I give a small wave. “Uh. Hi. I thought you two didn’t want to come?”</p><p><br/>Clarissa scoffs. “I still don’t. But…I have to make sure Nona stays okay.” Although Clarissa’s voice just sounds grouchy, I feel her eyes on me, the intensity of her mistrust washing over me like a cold undertow. Which, after everything… seems fair enough.</p><p><br/>“Al-alright. Is Ren with you?”</p><p><br/>“Yeah, he’s here in my pocket.” Clarissa smiles thinly.</p><p><br/>“Forget I asked.”</p><p><br/>When we approach The Cave Nona and Clarissa turn their heads upwards, admiring the heavy crystal structures at the entrance. “See a man about a dog…Saw the man but not the dog? What does that mean?” Nona asks, her eyes glittering with the reflection of the green crystal. I shrug. “I don’t know. As many times as we’ve done this, I still don’t really know what it means.”</p><p><br/>“Wowww, something Savior Alex <em>doesn’t</em> know. Shocking.”</p><p><br/>“Chill out Clarissa. Unless you have your own theory on it, I don’t think it’s fair to get after Alex about it. You’ve been pretty harsh tonight.” Jonas interjects, making eye contact with me.</p><p><br/>Clarissa lifts an incredulous eyebrow. “Whatever.”</p><p><br/>I hear Nona whistle, attempting to diffuse the tension. “So…that’s it?” Her gaze is pointed at the small triangle floating at the apex of the cave. Seeing it makes my heart pound a little harder. “Yeah. That would be it.”</p><p><br/>“So, what? You just mess with the radio until it does something?”</p><p><br/>I nod, and swallow dryly. I bring the radio out of my pocket and run my fingers over the dial. “Alright, let’s…try 140.1.” I announce, but no one responds. The radio wavers through different frequencies, passing by old-timey music, Morse code, and static before landing on 140.1. The ground begins to quake, and the triangle above us starts to form a shape…first it extends into one corner, then pivots into another, and unites all the sides into a larger triangle.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“NO.LONGER.SLEEPY-TIME.GAL.AWAKE.ALL.AWAKE.”</strong>
</p><p><br/>Nona and Clarissa stiffen, eyes stuck wide on the hazy opening above. I clear my throat.</p><p><br/>“Hello? Yes, we’re awake...is this the Sunken? Francis?”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“GETTINGSCARED.LOSINGTHINGS.HELP.MAGPIE…LOST.LITTLE.BIRD.”</strong>
</p><p><br/>“Help… ‘Help Magpie?’” Jonas murmurs. “Do you think it’s trying to say ‘Maggie’? That old woman who left the letters.” I nod in affirmation. “I think so.”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“MAGPIE.LOST.DARK.SUNKEN.”</strong>
</p><p><br/>“We…we have to get off this Island.” I start, talking quietly towards the group. “Maybe if we help ‘Magpie’, that’s somehow a way out?”</p><p><br/>“But what if you’re wrong?” Nona questions. “what if doing this doesn’t help us leave this-”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“LEAVE. IS. POSSIBLE.”</strong>
</p><p><br/>The cave falls into silence.</p><p><br/>“Leave- Leave is possible? How?” I ask, before Jonas can stop me.</p><p><br/>“Alex, what are you doing?” His voice betrays a tone of warning. I brush him off. “Francis, or whoever...Please. Can you get us out of this loop? What do we do?”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“NEW.RULES.LASTGAME.DOYOUWANT.TO.PLAYAGAME?”</strong>
</p><p><br/>“Alex, it sounds like the Sunken’s usual cryptic crap, this might be a trick. I think we should try something else.” Jonas objects, reaching out to pull me away from the Gate.I shrug him off. “What kind of game?” I ask it.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“HIDE.SEEK.SCARED LITTLE BIRD.YOU.IT.”</strong>
</p><p><br/>“What happens if we win?” Clarissa demands.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“GAME.END.HOMERUN.”</strong>
</p><p><br/>“That…that’s good, right? ‘Homerun’ means we’ll go home?” Nona brightens up a little. Hesitantly, Jonas adds, “And…what if we lose?”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“GAME.END.”</strong>
</p><p><br/>Jonas swallows hard. “This is the last loop. So…if we don’t find Maggie-”</p><p><br/>I nod. “The game ends anyway.” Above us the triangle bristles, and the radio-speak begins again.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“YOU.IT.”</strong>
</p><p><br/>“Can…can you give us a clue? How do we find ‘Magpie’?” I ask, my voice lilting hopefully.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>“WELL-WISHERS.BECOME.COINS.”</strong>
</p><p><br/>From between the twitching lines of reality breaking, there is a call from far away.</p><p><br/>“Holy shit- <em>NONA!</em>”</p><p><br/>The portal goes dead, and the world dissolves into static.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. JONAS: Multi-faceted</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>They've had a thousand black outs since coming to the Island. Painful trips to the past, somehow unable to really change anything; a full reset by morning. Jonas, in this final loop, has one last chance with the person he loves most in the world.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TRIGGER WARNING: This is a scene of Jonas in the hospital with his mother before she passes away. Mentions of IV's with bruising, but no gore or explicit details of dying.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.</em> Jonas startles, scraping the feet of the wooden chair across linoleum. It’s dark, wherever he is, except for the glow of eight or ten small lights and a vitals screen, which depicts a consistent but staggered heartbeat. There’s a sliver of light spilling out from the other side of a plastic curtain, and as he blinks away the dark, he can see a nurse at the ward station, pursing her lips over the lid of a coffee cup. Her computer casts her face in a blue, gaunt glow, with a series of dim, halo-like lights over the desk. There’s a rustle of movement beside him, and he realizes his hand is clasped to another, colder and smaller.</p><p><br/>
“Jonas? Sweetie, are you alright?” Mom’s voice is cracked with sleep. Jonas takes a deep breath. Jonas has adapted to the Island. To the horror, the fear... but never this. Never this. He takes a steadying breath and forces a smile.</p><p><br/>
“I’m good. Just had a weird dream.”</p><p><br/>
Mom sits up slowly, then flicks on a small light over the bed. Her hand has an IV in it, it’s colorful green plastic harsh against the purpling skin beneath it. The very first time, before the Island, Jonas had told his mother to go back to sleep, that they could talk in the morning. He doesn’t say that anymore.</p><p><br/>
“Do you want to talk about it?” She turns to face him, the shadows of two dangling earrings on her neck, their grey beads flickering in the light. Towards the end she wore earrings every night, and most times a colorful scarf to match; things she hadn’t really worn before. His chest tightens.</p><p><br/>
“No, it wasn’t that bad. I was turned into a horse, I think?” She usually laughs at this one best, and so that is the one he chooses to say each time he comes back here.<br/>
“Hey, mom, want me to grab your red ones? Earrings, I mean. They’re your favorite right?”</p><p><br/>
She settles back with a sassy thump on the upright mattress. “You remember that? My, you’ve gotten soft. Remembering your dear mother’s favorite vanity items.”</p><p><br/>
“You wear them the most, it’s not hard to figure out.” He reluctantly lets go of her hand and crosses the room to a wooden cabinet in the corner, one of the 'perks' of the more permanent hospital wings. He rifles through her bag and delivers the red earrings to her, swapping them out with the beaded ones. Her hands shake when she tries to fit them in, but she gives a heavy sigh of contentment when they’re on.</p><p><br/>
“Do you know why these are my favorite?”</p><p><br/>
<em>Yes.</em> “No, why?” he asks, sitting back at her side and taking up her hand again, trying to not look too rushed. She grins playfully and leans in, like it’s a secret they’re about to share.</p><p><em><em><br/>
</em></em>“These are my favorite because I <em>stole</em> them.” Jonas, dutifully, feigns surprise, which has come pretty easily as the loops go on.</p><p><br/>
“You!? Mrs. “stealing is the hand of the devil”? You stole something?”</p><p><br/>
“I was seventeen, I think. Or…maybe earlier? It’s so hard to remember these days.” Her voice is light, but Jonas’s heart contracts painfully.</p><p><br/>
“It was my first day in the real world, outside of the community. I hadn’t seen anything like that before, I’d never seen something that red. I was starstruck, but I didn’t have any money. I knew that I would have to go back, I couldn’t leave the farm or the community forever. It was a lot harder, then, to just leave."</p><p><br/>
“I’m not trying to judge you, by the way,” she amends quickly, tapping Jonas’s cheek softly. “I know that our way of life isn’t for you. But I saw these earrings, and I went into the store, and of course everyone stared, because my bonnet was on and my dress was plainer than theirs, but the store owner didn’t mind me much. Didn’t suspect I would steal from his shop and didn’t want to be rude by watching me too much. One of the great benefits of being different.”</p><p><br/>
Despite herself, and her lifetime of chaste humility, her grin is mischievous. “I’ve had to keep these hidden my whole life. But…I feel that now I’ve earned permission to wear them.” A flash of grief ignites between them, but she quickly repels it with a broad smile. “I’m glad that someone knows. Someone knows that I was multi-faceted, like these.” Her hands move up to rub the corners of the rubies.</p><p><br/>
“You<em> are</em> multi-faceted,” Jonas says, sitting up and kissing her forehead.</p><p><br/>
He puts his head to hers, allowing himself one, last “I love you,” before the scene glitches, and dissipates.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This scene was harder to write, but it was cathartic. The pain lingers, but life goes on.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. REN: 10 Minutes Earlier</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ren may be out of the loop...so to speak. But that doesn't mean he wants to stay that way.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Alex and Jonas crawl into the cave. Ren’s head spins, a foggy, aimless calm settling on his nerves. The taste of the chocolate is tinged with a light, pepper-y taste, and the brownie sticks to the roof of his mouth. He flops back onto the sand, blonde curls dirtying on impact. He’s only vaguely aware that he’s being spoken to, eyes half-lidded and looking up into the starry sky, which is streaked with thin, grey clouds.</p><p><br/>“Ren. Ren!” Nona’s voice. Soft, insistent. He lets his head roll to the side, Nona’s dark eyes searching his. “Hellooo?” she waves a hand in front of his face.</p><p><br/>“Don’t bother,” Clarissa sighs. “He’s useless like this anyway. Useless even when he isn’t baking on his own goods.”</p><p><br/>“Clarissa…” Nona’s voice lilts in a chiding tone. Ren giggles, ignoring the pressure of his backpack on his spine.</p><p><br/>“See, Clarissa? Nona likes me. No need to be such a sourpuss.”</p><p><br/>“Oh, really? Nona, tell Ren what you think of him. Go ahead,” Clarissa orders, moving her hands as if to shoo Nona towards Ren. When Nona hesitates, Clarissa’s motion becomes more insistent.</p><p><br/>“It’s okay, Nona, you can tell me.” Ren says, throwing a heavy hand over his heart. “I know that Clarissa just doesn’t understand what we have.”</p><p><br/>Nona moves back, so that when Ren’s hand reaches out to her she’s already out of reach. “Ren, I… I just wish…I wish you were more. More than this. We’re going into the cave, so. I guess you won’t be?”</p><p><br/>Ren furrows his brow and groans. “Ughhh, not you too! I already got yelled at by Alex so could everyone just, like, <em>chill out</em> for a sec?”</p><p><br/>Clarissa scoffs. “Uh, ‘chill out for a sec?’ Ren, we haven’t been able to ‘chill’ since we first came to this stupid Island, the one <em>you</em> invited everyone to. This is on you and you’re too faded to even fess up to it.”</p><p><br/>“Everything isn’t my fault, Jesus.” Ren grumbles. “None of whatever is happening is my fault. I’m just smart enough to not torture myself with it, clearly, while the rest of you just get mad about it.”</p><p><br/>Nona’s usually composed expression betrays agitation, tugging at him. “It isn’t our fault either, Ren, but at least we’re trying to fix it. We don’t want to get stuck here forever,” she says. Ren feels his conscience trying to sneak into his mind, but the magic kicks in and he waves off the invading guilt.</p><p><br/>“Well, as Clarissa said, I’m of no use to you. So I’ll stay out here, out of everybody’s way.”</p><p><br/>There is a heavy sigh, and the sound of two pairs of feet retreating across the sand, echoes of agitation and whispers of disappointment resounding off the walls surrounding the rocks until they fade out into silence.</p><p><br/>“Well, it’s just us, then,” Ren says, bending his eyes back to look on the rock piles. “The cool kids club.” His nerves still feel on edge. He chews into the brownie.</p><p><br/>He’s just shutting his eyes for a cat nap when he hears something erupt to life. Like rain pelting at a million raindrops a second against a sidewalk, a television left on too long after the end of a tape, or…</p><p><br/>He lifts his head, trying to discern the source. His backpack has raged to life, volume increasing, static agitating the previous calm of waves pulling at the shore and small, bleating insects. There is a light coming through the bottom of his pack. He unzips the main pocket and dares his fingers to wrap around the source: a small, red radio. <em>Alex’s</em> radio. The dial is at the farthest reaches of the frequency, seemingly trying to reach a higher number. It’s stuck on a station of pure, sharp static, and Ren fumbles for the volume control. As he twists the radio to find the volume buttons, the dial shifts, rocking back and forth onto other stations alternating static and radio hosts and old-timey music. Once he has lowered the volume, he starts moving the radio back and forth more slowly, watching the dial rotate opposite to his movements.</p><p><br/>“Ohhh no.” His head clears a little, long enough for him to point the radio at the entrance of the cave.</p><p><br/><strong>“BINGO! NOW YOU’VE GOT IT,SPORT!”</strong> The radio speaks, mimicking an old radio show host.</p><p><br/>Ren shrieks and drops the radio, his mind still clanking slowly around <em>what the fuck just happened</em>. “Okay, Ren, no need to panic. The radio just… transitioned into a talking compass, nothing wrong with that. Gotta respect people’s choices. But…this is a radio, right? Not a person?” He means the question to be rhetorical, but the radio responds.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>FRIENDS ARE.PEOPLE.LET’S. BE FRIENDS!</strong>
</p><p><br/>“Woah. Spooky.” Ren stares at the radio, unsure of how to respond. Alex would follow it, he thinks. Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, he wraps his fingers around the thick skin of the radio and follows the dial towards the cave. “This is a bad idea, Ren,” He mumbles to himself, his feet seeming to move of their own accord. “Like, every horror movie says this is a bad idea. But you’re doing it anyway…Great. Great choices being made.” Soon, as he crawls shakily up walls and between tight rocks in the cave, he starts hearing voices.</p><p><br/><strong>“NEW.RULES.LASTGAME.DOYOUWANT.TO.PLAYAGAME?”</strong>A loud, stuttered voice, like the radio Ren is holding, reverberates in a muffled tone in front of him. In a smaller echo, he hears Jonas saying something, but he can’t catch every word until he is approaching the mouth of a larger room. <em>Room? Cave-room? What do you call a big cave-room?</em> He sees Alex and the rest of his friends looking up at something above them, though he can’t see what it is yet.</p><p><br/>“Can…can you give us a clue? How do we find ‘Magpie’?” Alex calls up to the ceiling. Ren huffs. “Who’s tripping now?” Ren grumbles, but he gasps when he looks up, and sees the portal. The cave shakes with the boom of its response:</p><p><br/><strong>“WELL-WISHERS.BECOME.COINS.”</strong><br/>He watches in horror as the cave before him starts to glitch, losing its solidness. Alex and the others seem to be frozen, eyes turned up at the thing on the ceiling, except Nona, who had begun to twitch and flicker in and out. Ren wants to run to her, but his legs are shaking and repelling any movement forward. His chest seizes in panic.</p><p><br/>“Holy shit. <em>NONA!”</em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. ALEX: Best Intentions</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Nona's gone missing...and Alex has to face the music.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>By the time we turn around, it’s too late. Ren’s voice feels alien in the cave, unexpected, his words like static as it passes through an imperfect reality, unable to flow through the cave which is in temporary chaos. I whip my head to face him, my neck seizing in the sharp movement through my body’s glitching state, and see his expression reaching out somewhere else. I follow his gaze to Nona, whose body is being twisted and glitched and cut in half. Within only a few seconds, she’s gone. I turn wildly to find the tape player, and move as quickly as I can to turn the knob and shift the cave back into reality. The slow and mindless drip... drip... drip of the stalactite into the water below the now dead portal is the last thing I hear before blacking out.</p><p><br/>
***</p><p><br/>
“Alex? Guys? <em>Please</em> stop being cursed…” Ren hovers, voice nervous. My head aches, my mind snapping out of the memory I had been pulled into. Ren sighs in short relief, but shakes with panic, moving hesitantly closer.</p><p><br/>
“What’s happening to you guys? You all just...dropped, and you were mumbling, and your eyes were <em>glowing</em>... also, what happened to Nona!?” Jonas is the last to wake, likely stuck in a memory. Although watching his eyes glower and hearing his quiet murmuring is incredibly uncomfortable, it doesn’t last long. After he wakes, each of us is rubbing our head, groaning at the -unfortunately- familiar sensation of being glitched. Clarissa is the first to react, although she doesn’t answer Ren’s question.</p><p><br/>
“Nona? NONA!” Clarissa stands up, cupping her hands around a rose-bud mouth, eyebrows for once not furrowing in agitation. She runs towards the end of the cave, trying to see if Nona is somewhere else in the cave. I follow her, hoping that Nona is somewhere nearby. <em>Oh God, Please let Nona be okay...</em> Clarssa’s yelling scratches the cave walls with sharp tones.</p><p><br/>
“What did you do?” she snarls, and I flinch when her eyes are locking onto me. Jonas is by Ren, out of earshot, likely trying to explain what happens during the glitches.</p><p><br/>
“Wh...what? I didn’t <em>do</em> anything, I just turned the knob like I’m supposed to, to stop the glitch.” My voice betrays indignation, which only seems to fuel her.</p><p><br/>
“God, Alex...Nona’s gone and the only thing you can say is that it’s not your fault? Instead of trying to defend yourself against me, like usual, try to use your brain to figure out what you did. I’m literally asking you what you did before Nona-” She stops, and doesn’t seem intent on finishing her sentence.</p><p><br/>
“No, you’re <em>accusing</em> me. I’ve messed up before, I know that-”</p><p><br/>
Clarissa scoffs, almost in disbelief. “Barring that <em>massive</em> understatement, Alex, I could really not give a shit about that right now, because Nona is gone, and I’m not, and she-” Clarissa stops, her voice starting to strain. Her eyes are betraying a vulnerability that roots me, but she doesn’t let it seep into her voice. “She’s my best friend, Alex. Probably my only friend, since your brother.” For a moment, my mind flits to Jonas, who I didn’t realize she was very close to, before it corrects itself, and Michael’s face appears.</p><p><br/>
“I can’t lose anyone else. And that thing,” she says, pointing back at the dead portal, “said this is the final round. This is it and whatever happens I <em>will</em> get Nona out of here, regardless of what you think you should do, or need to do. You keep making these choices without thinking, without checking if the rest of us are okay with it!”</p><p><br/>
I look at her intently, speaking slowly. “But that’s the only way to stop the glitch cycle. I’m not trying to make decisions for anyone... I just... I don’t know what you expect me to do about that, it’s basically the only thing we can do!”</p><p><br/>
“It’s the only thing you’ve tried!” She throws up her arms, and I cross mine over my chest. “Maybe if you had waited, Nona would have been set back with us. But you didn’t give her a chance. You just went into “Savior Alex” mode and now <em>I don’t know where she is</em>.” Clarissa pauses, pushing her way closer to my face, her voice colder. “Stop trying to act like I’m the villain here. Between the two of us, we both know who fits that title. I would <em>never</em> do what you did to me. So maybe sit on that next time you try to make decisions for the rest of us.” She turns away and heads towards Ren and Jonas. The radio feels heavy in my hand, the drip off of the stalactite like a melancholy period on the conversation.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. CLARISSA: Clipped Words</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Clarissa's visions of Michael always seem to draw her in completely.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“She’s just shy- she doesn’t hate you.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
Michael gives her a comforting grin before swinging his swivel chair back to his desk, where he is hunched over a notebook littered with scratched out words and sentences, arrows with statements in the margins.</em>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
“At the very least, she doesn’t want me to be your girlfriend. I don’t get it. I’m not, like, a total jerk; I don’t know what she wants from me, it’s like talking to my mother.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Clarissa taps her fingernails unconsciously against the leg of his desk, flopping back onto Michael’s comforter. “I try to ask her about her interests. Try to, I don’t know, connect on something? I’m pretty sure she just sees me as this super popular girl with sharp nails and no personality. To be fair, she’s right about two of those things.” His pen pauses and he reaches out to steady her hand, which has started tapping faster.</em>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
“Gotta focus.” He says this with a smile, and Clarissa rolls her eyes in feigned dramatics.</em>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
“If only you weren’t so admirable maybe you would just copy-paste last year’s speech. That’s what that last guy did. And the girl before that. It’s practically tradition.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
Michael purses his mouth, deep in thought. “I just...I feel like it should mean something. What’s wrong with starting a new tradition?” He is still hunched over the page, and as he's writing his tongue sticks between his teeth- a habit for when he’s thinking too hard. Clarissa sits up and places her elbows on the corner of his desk.</em>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
“How about you start a new tradition of kissing me right now?”</em>
</p><p><br/>
***</p><p><br/>
Alex trudges at the back of the group as they crawl back out of the cave, the breeze whipping off the lake crisp and fresh. Ren, like a fly, keeps buzzing between each of them, pestering questions rolling out of his mouth in a stream. He sucks on his lower lip, a bad habit that always chaps his mouth and makes him whine for days after, audible even from across their shared lawn back home.</p><p><br/>
Clarissa aches. The last glitch she fell in headfirst. She forgot where she was. When she was. She had forgotten what was alive and what was dead. For so many of these horrible nights she was thrown back into those soft moments, moments where her future <em>meant</em> something. A future with someone else, someone who she felt like being soft around. Michael had smoothed her over, like waves on a jagged rock; even though, as Alex is fond to say, they were only together a few months. That didn’t diminish what he meant to her, and her to him. Time...time is strange. Time doesn’t decide how in love you’re allowed to be with someone, and it doesn’t decide how long pain lingers. It lingers still, she imagines. Otherwise why would she keep going back to those spots? Those small, insignificant encounters that sit in her mind like stones in a garden?</p><p><br/>
Jonas is just ahead, but Clarissa notices he’s slowed to walk beside her.</p><p><br/>
“Are you okay?”</p><p><br/>
She scoffs. “Listen ‘big brother’, I know you’ve taken on this feudal role with Alex to protect her from me, but just focus on protecting yourself, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.”</p><p><br/>
Jonas looks struck. “Oh, uh...I meant about Nona? She’s close to you, I’m sorry for what happened.”</p><p><br/>
Clarissa shifts her gaze away. “Yeah, well. It wasn’t you who let her disappear.”</p><p><br/>
“Alex didn’t mean for anything to happen. We don’t even know for sure what happened, it wasn’t her fault. She was afraid, she made a judgement call.”</p><p><br/>
“But when did we decide she gets to make those calls? What about her makes her the best for this? She’s not more mature than the rest of us, she’s not smarter, certainly, and she isn’t the best judge of character. She...she just decides based on what she feels is right. That’s not a great basis for decision making.”</p><p><br/>
Jonas doesn’t say anything for a while, seemingly at war with himself on how to respond. “What would you have done differently?”</p><p><br/>
“I would have waited. The glitch just sticks for a while and starts over if you don’t move the tape player fast enough, right? And maybe Nona would have been brought back at the restart. But Alex didn’t care about that. She doesn’t care about Nona, or me, and she doesn’t even seem to like Ren anymore...”</p><p><br/>
“She cares about us. This whole thing has been torturing her longer than me or you, so maybe she doesn’t always make the right decisions-”</p><p><br/>
“So because she is having a hard time she can just do whatever to us? Let us disappear?”</p><p><br/>
“It’s not a conscious choice; she’s not gonna ‘let us disappear’.” Jonas sighs, starting to look agitated.</p><p><br/>
“You’d be surprised.” Clarissa storms towards the cliffs, boots crushing smoothed stones into the gritty sand. Michael’s voice rises to the surface of her mind.</p><p><br/>
<em>“She’s just shy- she doesn’t hate you.”</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. ???</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>... . . / .- / -- .- -. / .- -... --- ..- - / .- / -.. --- --. .-.-.-</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. REN: PART 1- Just Being Neighborly</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Alright, so the...whoever it was, they gave us a clue. ‘Well-wishers become coins’. I think we’re supposed to go to the well, the one that got abandoned. But we’ll need to stop on Main Street first, to get supplies; who knows what we’ll find there.” Alex says, pocketing the radio as we walk across the sand.</p><p><br/>
Clarissa stops abruptly in Alex’s path. “And what about Nona? Ready to forget her already?”</p><p><br/>
Ren puts a hand to the side of his head, the ~magic~ still trying to take over; his temples ache from the effort of staying present. Jonas, Alex and Clarissa start debating but Ren can’t follow the conversation. Their voices cut over one another, building in agitation, <em>We have to find Nona first, we have to be cautious, the sunken have pulled this kind of thing before, too much has changed, we have to find Maggie Adler...</em> They don’t even seem to recognize he’s there.</p><p><br/>
“Uh… I don’t know much about what’s going on,” Ren interjects, “but Maggie Adler...She died, like, three days ago, right? So…what does she have to do with this? Why are we trying to find her? Shouldn’t Nona be our first...” Everyone has now stopped talking, turned to him. He gulps. “Priority?” No one says anything at first, and Ren starts to feel shrunken. Clarissa nods curtly, moving to stand beside Ren.</p><p><br/>
“You know what, yes, Reginald, Nona <em>should</em> be our first priority. Thanks for adding something to the conversation for once.” <em>Ouch</em>. Ren stings, but his heart allows for a small beam of hope to break through. He feels himself coming back into the circle, which, only a few hours ago, pre-time distortion thing, didn’t seem to hate him. Only a few hours ago, Alex felt like his best friend but… this, at least, was something.</p><p><br/>
Clarissa’s words had stung, but the angry furrow forming in Alex’s face is like a fist reaching into his chest. She’s looking at him in a way she never had before. <em>Holy shit, she hates me. She actually hates me.</em> Ren looks down at his shoes. He wants to be invisible.</p><p><br/>
Alex sighs, “Ren basically just got here Clarissa, he doesn’t even know what’s going on. It’s likely that Nona is there, at the well; that’s where the voice wants us to go. Unless you have a better theory, somehow?”</p><p>“Nona said that every other time we’ve done this she popped up in that creepy little graveyard, by the Bridge Stand. I’m going to go there.”</p><p><br/>
“Clarissa- ugh...You can’t even know for sure that she’ll be there, everything is different now. We need to stay together, splitting up isn’t going to help us get off this Island!”<br/>
“‘Us’ being a selective term for you, right?” Clarissa snaps, and Alex winces.</p><p><br/>
“Clarissa, I-”</p><p><br/>
“Not up for discussion. I’m going to find her, since you’ve got other priorities. We’re not going to leave her behind.” Clarissa starts off for the stairs leading up to Maggie Adler’s estate.</p><p><br/>
“Wait! Clarissa, I-” Ren pauses, pointedly avoiding Alex’s gaze. “I’m coming with you.”</p><p><br/>
Alex doesn’t say anything, and Ren can’t bring himself to look at her.</p><p><br/>
Clarissa doesn’t look behind her. “Whatever. At least you’ll be good ghost bait.”</p><p><br/>
Ren shuffles across to the steps, then picks up his pace when he sees how far up Clarissa has already gotten. From behind him, he hears Jonas’s softer tone, “Let them go, Alex. We’ll take the cliffs, come on.” From there, all Ren hears is the hum of insects in the beach-grass, the hollow creaking of the steps, and waves pulling like claws at the shore.</p><p><br/>
***</p><p><br/>
Most of the walk is silent. Clarissa charges ahead, her phone flashlight bobbing intensely in front of her. Ren is tripping over his own feet trying to keep up, fighting the gravity of sleep-deprivation and the now-waning buzz from his brownie. Even the lamplights all around the Island can’t catch the shadow of every tree root protruding from the pathway. The eerie blue light of dusk messes with his vision. Ren had always been easily lost in these woods. Trees, cliffs; they all feel the same. Usually Alex is there to lead the way, but…</p><p><br/>
“Clarissa, I know it’s important we get there as fast as we can, but I need to slow down- little legs,” He pants, resting his hands on his knees. For a moment he thinks she won’t stop, then she does.</p><p><br/>
“Fine. Just a minute though.”</p><p><br/>
She sounds a little out of breath, but she tries to conceal it. Ren tosses his bag unceremoniously against the big Roosting Tree, dropping down onto the ground. Clarissa crosses her arms, her fingers drumming insistently on the crook of her other arm. She leans back against the other side of the tree. Ren pulls out a water bottle from his bag. The water is lukewarm and stale.</p><p><br/>
“Uh, here, if- if you want some.” He caps the bottle and holds it out towards her. She grimaces.</p><p><br/>
“No thanks. I don’t want my mouth to taste like a stoner’s birthday cake.”</p><p><br/>
Ren rolls his eyes. “First, it was a brownie, not a birthday cake. And second, I chewed some gum on the way over, so. Just old water flavor.” Clarissa shakes her head. Ren shrugs. “Suit yourself.” He puts the bottle back in the bag. He leans back into the trunk, taking a deep breath. The cold, the fog, and the smell of dusk fills Ren with memories.<br/>
“You know, when we were kids, Alex and I-”</p><p><br/>
“I don’t want to talk about her. Come on, let’s move.” Clarissa cuts him off, using her hip to push away from the tree. She steps away, starting to scale up a cliffs-edge next to the tree. Ren pouts, but slings his bag over his shoulders.</p><p><br/>
“Clarissa, I don’t want to pry…”</p><p><br/>
“Then don’t.” She’s already halfway up, her boots double-checking against footholds before she moves farther up.</p><p><br/>
“But… I just don’t understand. If you and Alex and...everybody, have been doing this night over and over...why do you guys still hate each other? How long has it been...since...you know.” Ren mimics Clarissa’s foothold checks. His climb is slower. He stops when Clarissa does.</p><p><br/>
Her shoulders hunch. “I thought we agreed that you didn’t want to pry.”</p><p><br/>
“Well, I changed my mind. What’s going on with you two tonight? I mean...couldn’t you get along just until we’re out of this?”</p><p><br/>
“And by ‘get along’ of course you mean just going with Alex’s plan like we always do. Not that you’d remember.”</p><p><br/>
Ren bites back a sharp remark and settles for a huffy sigh. “No, I mean...I agree with you, we need to find Nona first. If this is where she usually turns up, we need to check it. But it’s more than that. I mean, I know you guys hated one another when we first got here, but it’s been, what, a couple dozens loops since then?”</p><p><br/>
Clarissa scoffs. “If only. Savior Alex probably wanted to spare your feelings, but this is the 265th loop. That we’ve been able to count at least.”</p><p><br/>
Ren’s arms almost give out. “Wh- are you serious?”</p><p><br/>
Clarissa is now settled on top of the cliff, her legs dangling over the edge and her elbows propped on her knees.</p><p><br/>
“Yep,” she says with a pop.</p><p><br/>
Ren scales the rest of the cliff and sits next to her. His mind whirs. Clarissa gets up; she doesn’t offer a hand. They finally break out of the thickest part of the woods, the Bridge Stand over in the middle distance. They pass an old red building, and Clarissa starts to jog ahead towards the underside of the bridge.</p><p><br/>
“No...no, no, she’s got to be here.” Clarissa spins aimlessly on the small plot of gravestones. Ren almost slips on the wet rock crossing over to Clarissa. He watches his footsteps, avoiding the mossy bits, and he hops off onto the gravesite. When he looks up, Clarissa is staring right at him, eyes wide. Her arms are trembling, almost as she’s trying to force them to keep still. For the first time in his life...she looks afraid.</p><p><br/>
“<em>Ren</em>.” Her whisper is short, desperate. She slams her fists over her ears, hyperventilating, hunching over, falling to her knees.</p><p><br/>
“Holy shit, <em>oh shit!</em> Clarissa? Clarissa, talk to me,” Ren’s voice shakes. He bends down onto one knee, his arms hesitating and then taking her by the shoulders. She stops. Her eyes blink red, and her body lets off an ebbing, black aura. Her shoulders roll back, her face smoothing over into a sinister smile.</p><p><br/>
“Hello, Dear. You’re finally awake.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. REN: PART 2- Possession and Revelation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much to those of you who have posted kudos and commented on my work- This is my first big writing project in a while, and while I'm self-sustaining on my passion for writing it, it's always nice to hear which things people are excited about!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ren yelps, tipping backwards and dropping onto the ground. The blackness surrounding Clarissa makes her almost seem to glow in contrast, her skin a sickly yellow under the lamplights.  </p><p>“Whaaat the hell is happening? Are you blacking out again?”  </p><p>Clarissa stands smoothly, tipping her expression to one side. Her voice is that of many, distorted and loud, achingly slow. “Oh Reginald, you’ve missed so many of our games. We’re so glad you’ve come out to play.” Ren tries to get up, braced on his elbows on cold earth, but they won’t move. Ren gulps.  </p><p>“We? So you…‘you’ plural?”  </p><p>Clarissa- the Sunken- turns and saunters to the graves, petting the rough stone with feather-like fingers. “We have no graves. Nowhere to rest.” The sunken turn back towards Ren, moving a thin hand to the nape of Clarissa’s neck. “Clarissa can rest.”  </p><p><em> Soooo </em> <em>  creepy.  </em> Ren’s mouth is dry, and it feels like his arms and legs are full of hot lightning. His body is tense to  <em> do </em> something, but he can’t seem to make it move. He wants to say something, but there’s a rock in his throat. The Sunken turn to him.  </p><p>“We still want her. The girl. Clarissa.” They sound agitated, possessive. “We were lied to. We are...always lied to. But no more. Alex can’t keep her from us.” </p><p>“Alex? What do you mean?” Ren asks.  </p><p>The sunken smile again, wandering back towards him and stroking his cheek with a loving palm. “Oh child… there is so much you do not know. The girl, Clarissa, was promised to us, the game was fair.” The hand suddenly grips around the back of his neck, their expression going cold again. “Alex broke the rules. That’s why we don’t like playing with her anymore.” Clarissa’s form glitches out, and then she’s away from him, sitting with one leg crossed over the other on one of the gravestones.  </p><p>“Would you like to play with us, Reginald?” The Sunken ask, smiling coyly. “The rules are simple. Give us the girl. In return, we-” </p><p>“No. No way.” Ren says, and he almost doesn’t realize that it’s him talking. He finds something inside him that forces him to stand, though his legs quake. The Sunken purse Clarissa’s lips, but keep their posture reclined. Clarissa glitches out again, and then the Sunken are behind him, putting their arms around his neck, movements languid and inviting. They put their mouth to his ear.  </p><p>“Alex would do it. You want to be like Alex, don’t you?”  </p><p>Ren recoils, laughing nervously as he pushes out of Clarissa’s arms. “You’re lying! Don’t try to mess with me, I know that you’ve got some kind of…weird, ‘cursed children’ thing going on, and it’s honestly kinda gross, so. Get out of her. Please.”  </p><p>Their expression is almost pitying, leaning their head to one side. “We don’t lie. We don’t need to. Doubt us, if you like. Soon you’ll know as we do what a terrible liar Alex is.” </p><p>Suddenly Clarissa’s body is ripped from the ground, her back twisting in a sharp, almost broken way. Her words are garbled, and her limbs move in sporadic, desperate twitches- she looks like she’s drowning. Ren stares in horror. He doesn’t know what to do, paralyzed with fear as he watches her suspended in the air, the Sunken choking her with their rage. Something moves against his back. Ren drops his backpack to the ground and fumbles horribly to get the zipper open. He grabs Alex’s red radio, which is vibrating at a low pulse. He tries moving the dial, and the vibration intensifies. He looks up, and watches as a small triangle forms, a line of electricity extending from itself and forming a second angle. He adjusts it again, and the lines form a complete portal just above Clarissa’s body. Clarissa drops, eyes still glowing deep auburn, but her words are unclear, incoherent; but at least she doesn’t sound like she’s suffocating anymore. Above her is what looks like a triangular vacuum in space, just like the one in the cave. It looks…dead. Ren hesitates, and then sits down beside Clarissa, putting his hand over hers.  </p><p>*** </p><p>Ren keeps still, unsure of any movements except to keep his hand there. He doesn’t know why. She’ll probably yell at him when she wakes up; she doesn’t like to be touched, usually. He thinks longingly about grabbing a brownie from his backpack, but leaves them where they are, deep in the main pocket of his bag. He crosses his legs on the ground, incapable of not watching Clarissa’s face, trying to understand her words. Her expression is blank, the glow of her eyes fogged with the black smoke-like substance rising off her. Ren wonders fleetingly if it's toxic, like UV radiation. He’s lost in thought, the Sunken’s words boiling in the forefront of his mind, then Clarissa groans. </p><p>“Ow...Jesus, that never gets easier.” She rubs her temples with one hand, then sees Ren’s palm over her other. Before she can pull away Ren removes his hand and stands up.  </p><p>“Are...are you okay, Clarissa?”  </p><p>Clarissa responds with a rolling of her eyes. “Yep, peachy.”  </p><p>She tries to stand but wavers. Ren reaches for her arm, so she doesn’t collapse, and she pulls out of his reach. “I’m fine,” she snaps. When she sees Ren’s stricken expression, she sighs apologetically. “I just...need a sec.” She rubs her fingers into her forehead, like she’s trying to mold it. </p><p>“Hey, so...do you remember anything about what just happened?” Ren asked, clammy hands rubbing over each other anxiously. </p><p>“No. When the Sunken take over you it's like...you can’t exist there with them. So they send you somewhere else, or… something. I don’t know if they can control that.” Clarissa pauses. “What did they say to you?”  </p><p>Ren hesitates, trying to keep his voice light. “They said something about...Alex? About her ‘giving’ you to them. That...that’s not true, right? Just them messing with us?” He waits for her answer, but all he sees is her expression waxing, her eyes glazing over. <em> She’s shutting down </em> <em> ,  </em>Ren realizes, and his stomach suddenly feels pulled, like it’s receding inside of him. He shakes his head. “That’s... Alex wouldn’t do that. I know you’re not her favorite person, but...you’re, obviously, still a person. It doesn’t match her personality profile to sacrifice someone to...cursed World War II child-ghosts.” </p><p>Clarissa grimaces. She crosses her arms over her chest, avoiding his gaze. “Well, it does now. ‘Sacrifice the one to save the many’, or whatever. I…I guess I didn’t make the cut for her. I’m not worth saving. Not to Alex, at least.” Clarissa’s lip twists into a grimace. “I guess that’s something Michael and I have in common.”  </p><p>Ren bites down an automated defense. <em> Alex...there’s no way… </em> </p><p>“‘Alex would never do this’, you’re thinking to yourself.” Clarissa interjects. “I did too. When I first found out, I thought the Sunken were lying. Trying to divide the group. But...they weren’t. I never thought...I didn’t realize that she really hates me so much that…” Clarissa stops, and bites her lip. Her eyes are glassy still, but now there are tears pooling in the corners, and her voice rises. “I...I was angry. I was angry that she couldn’t save him, I was angry that he was dead and she was <em> there </em>  and she couldn’t pull herself together to help him. I was angry that he drowned, not knowing that his sister would stand there and do  <em> nothing </em> . I was angry that  <em> her </em>  mistake ended his life, when he could have done so much  <em> more </em> with it. </p><p>“But we’ve been here, in this...nightmare, over and over, hashing out the same fight, holding on to the same anger. I found ways to heal, found ways to try to open up to her again, trying and trying ever since I <em> met </em>   M ichael, and still it’s never enough.  <em> She couldn’t swim </em> , I told myself.  <em> She was terrified, she seized up, she’s just a kid, she couldn’t have known things would end up this way, she didn’t want Michael to die </em>. I came up with a million reasons to forgive that, to stop hating her for it. I thought...I thought we were okay.” </p><p>Something is twisting inside of him, slipping between his organs and disjointing him from his reality. <em> I know Alex. I’ve always known her. There’s no way </em> <em> …Right? </em> He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and Clarissa quickly wipes away the tears breaking free of her control.  </p><p>“How can you be sure that they weren’t lying?” He asks.  </p><p>Clarissa’s voice is a knife. “<em> I asked her </em>.” </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. ALEX: Well-Wishers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Alex's secret weighs on her more than she realized.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I stick my phone into my front pocket, letting the light shake unevenly as I scale the winding cliffs. I huff heavily, moving too fast for my breath to catch up. I hear Jonas groan behind me.</p><p>“Alex? We need to slow down, we don’t know what we’re gonna find at the well. Also, I’m tired. Also, I had a beer before we started this and moving this fast is not great.” He’s trying to keep the tone light, which, as he knows, usually pulls me out of my bigger funks.</p><p>“I know what you’re doing, Jonas,” I say, inflecting my words with a sing-song tone.</p><p>“Well...is it working?” He asks through labored breaths. I stop, waiting for him until he leans back against the cliffside beside me.</p><p>“I...I don’t know if it can. This thing with Clarissa… I don’t know how to fix it.” I start dragging the toe of my sneaker through the dirt, making zig-zagging lines.</p><p>“Well...sometimes things can’t be fixed. This time it’s really on Clarissa, not you.” <em>He sounds so reasonable</em>, I think. <em>But...he’s wrong.</em></p><p>“I don’t know about that. I really messed up.”</p><p>Jonas turns me towards him, hands solidly on my shoulders. “What happened to Michael is not your fault.” His expression is serious, his eyes dark and full. He emphasizes his words with a squeeze on my shoulders, and smiles, encouraging...but all I feel is a pit opening up in my stomach. “You know that. More importantly, she knows that. I’m not sure why this is coming up again, you both seemed to be, I don’t know...healing together? This is just a relapse, she’ll come out of it.”</p><p>“But what if she doesn’t? What if she’s right?”</p><p>Jonas sighs, kicking a heel back against the cliff behind him and looking up at the stars. “Honestly… most of what she said tonight hasn’t fully made sense. I know she’s talking about Michael, but, I don’t know...it seems like she’s personalizing it. Either way I don’t think this will last long; everybody’s on edge, especially tonight. When it ends, we can talk to her about it, okay?” I nod, looking down at my feet as Jonas starts to scale the next section of the cliff. He offers me his hand, and I take it. <em>I hope we never have to talk about it. He’ll never forgive me. None of them will. </em></p><p>Jonas and I stop on Main Street, and Jonas opens the parks building for supplies. We grab rope, better flashlights, a utility knife, a flare gun (more for Jonas to play with than actually use), and walkie talkies. He throws everything into a bag that he tears the tag off of, and we carry on towards epiphany fields.</p><p>***</p><p>The wind rustles through the leaves and seems to bite through my jacket. Jonas leans over the lip of the well. I try to shine my flashlight down, but it doesn’t show the bottom. Jonas whistles. “Yep. That sure is a well. It looks like it’s dried up, let’s check.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a penny.</p><p>“Why do guys always have spare change hanging out in their pockets? Isn’t this more of a debit card society now?”</p><p>“Hey, I got one of those too! You jealous of my superior pockets?” He says, feigning defensiveness. I roll my eyes and he shrugs. “Well, it’s lucky for you that I have loose change. Unless you’d rather shoot a flare down. I could do that.” I shake my head. He turns his back to the well, and closes his eyes.</p><p>“Whaaat are you doing?”</p><p>“Making a wish, what does it look like?” He flicks the coin from his hand and it leaps in a perfect arch over his head. We both move to the edge of the well, listening for a sound. None comes.</p><p>“Hmm.” Is all Jonas says in response.</p><p>“Well… I guess no sound at least means there’s no water down there? That’s good, right? Or...maybe it hasn’t landed yet…” I lean over the edge, tipping my ear down to listen. Nothing.</p><p>“Maybe we have to use the radio, somehow?” Jonas suggests. I turn through the stations, but none of them stand out. Jonas braces himself against the stone lip of the well, pursing his lips and breathing heavily from his nose.</p><p>“‘Well-wishers become coins.’” Jonas quotes, raising his eyebrows. “I was hoping I was wrong, but I guess that means, ‘propel yourselves into the inky blackness of an abandoned well.’” He drops the backpack off of his shoulder and takes out the rope. He knots it around the trunk of a nearby tree, testing it by pulling it down and supporting his weight. “All right, um...I can go first?” He offers, though it sounds more like a question.</p><p>“My hero,” I sass, before taking the rope into my hands. I wrap it around the back of my body, keeping tension in the rope. I’m about to swing my legs over the edge of the well but Jonas stops me.</p><p>“Do you even know how to do this? It’s not like the movies, it takes a lot of arm strength.”</p><p>“Lucky for me I have arms, so. No biggie.” Jonas’s face starts to look tense as I shift more to the inside of the well. “Also, I have done this before.” I smirk, propelling myself into the dark.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. NONA: Part One (1Hour Prior)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Nona vanished from the cave...and now she's here. While the others have discovered more about each other, she is about to discover more about herself, about the history of the Island, and her role in it.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is the chapter I've been most excited to upload; I can't wait the usual seven to ten day upload schedule I've stuck to thus far. I love Nona's character, and trying to get into her shoes has been difficult, but rewarding.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Home. </em>My grandfather, arms streaked with black soot and grease, rolls back under the frame of my car, taking the tool he had asked me to grab for him. <em>I’m not here</em>, I remind myself. <em>Not really. Not for long</em>. I try to remember when I am. I realize that my grandmother must have passed already by this point in my memory, because there’s a number of boxes lining the top shelf of the garage, labelled “Mae’s clothing”, or “Mae’s diaries”. They look new.</p><p>“I don’t know how you kids mess up your carriages so fast. You know you gotta take speed bumps and things slowly, Non’.” His gruff voice is muffled from beneath the car.</p><p>“Oh, uh… yeah, I’ll be more careful.” The garage door is open, cool summer air rolling inside. Everything is green and saturated with light and heat. I step out into the driveway, feeling the sun’s heat beating on my shoulders. I have never cared for sunny days, before. I didn’t mind them, didn’t think much about them. But after so long, being stuck in the cold, the dark, and the mist of Edward’s Island, even if I haven’t been awake for most of it... it feels nice. It feels nice to pretend I can stay here. It feels nice to pretend that there are leftovers in the fridge for me, ice cream in the freezer, my ballet shoes tucked neatly in my closet next to contraband drinks Clarissa had snuck in for us.</p><p>“Well, that should do it.” He rolls back out, standing smoothly. He moves younger than he looks, hair graying and crow’s feet like wings on his eyes. He still retains the strength and ruggedness of his early military years. He doesn’t keep many things from when he was in the war, but he maintains the attitude. That, and a Medal of Honor, though he never talks about what it had been awarded for. I don’t know if he even knows that I know about it. I had only seen it because I was snooping through his drawers to find spare cash; just a little, nothing that would be missed. When I found it, the medal’s felt case hadn’t shown the dust of neglect. It was worn in some places from use, the felt flattened under the shape of my grandfather’s fingers.</p><p>“Non’? You alright?” His voice is grumbly, but his dark eyes fill with concern. He grabs a stained, torn rag and starts to wipe off his arms. I brush my fingers over my face, not realizing I’ve started crying.</p><p>“No. I...I miss…”</p><p>He pulls me into a stiff hug. “I know. I miss her too. Everyday.” He doesn’t try to keep his arms from dirtying the back of my shirt, and I sink my face into his shoulder. <em>No, it’s you. I miss you.</em></p><p>***</p><p>My eyes flutter open, though the darkness around me doesn’t differentiate eyes open or closed. I’m on the ground, which, when I brace my hands against it to rise, makes a sickening <em>squelch</em> and gives way to my weight, slick with mud and leaves. The dank smell of moss and stale air suffocates me. </p><p>“Oh, gross…”</p><p>I rub my hands over the thighs of my jeans. I reach into my back pocket for my phone, the sharp blue light of the screen blinding me for a moment. Clarissa’s face and mine look back at me; Clarissa is taking the selfie, and behind us I can see the cake she had brought for me last year. <em>It’s been much longer than that.</em> I shake my phone to activate the flashlight, and shriek. A mirror hangs from a nail lodged between stones, the frame bronzed and ornate in design. In the mirror I see my own horrified reflection. My eyes flit to the darkness behind me. I expect it to be there, looming in the shadows, towering above, red eyes glowering with decades-old anger. Instead, I see the outline of some large object, presumably inanimate.</p><p>“A wardrobe?” I wonder for a moment if I’m in some small, stone room, but when I look up I realize there is a pinprick of light. “In...a well? What…?” I cup my hands around my mouth. “Hello? Clarissa? I’m-I’m stuck down here, can any of you guys hear me? Alex?” There’s no reply, so I turn my gaze back to the wardrobe. I shouldn’t open it. I don’t want to open it. It doesn’t belong here; I don’t belong here. A relic misplaced, outside of time. I step closer, cautiously. It’s old, and rotted, and caked with mud and webs and grime. <em>I guess it really has been here. Why is it in a well?</em> I look around me again, noting which stones might be able to be grabbed onto.</p><p>I think about opening the wardrobe doors so that I can try to step up and climb on top of it, give myself a head start on escape. Just as likely, opening it might unleash some new horror, and I hesitate for a few tense minutes. By the time I make my decision, my nails have been nibbled to the nubs. I turn and rip the nail-spike from between the rocks, the mirror making a sharp, scraping sound against the stone behind it. I stop it from falling and set it upright on the ground, but it’s already cracked. The nail is large, like a railroad spike. I grip it in my fist, using my boot to wedge one door away from the other, preparing myself for some ghost or possessed friend to start tormenting me about my grandfather, as the Sunken are wont to do, but the wardrobe exhales. I shine my flashlight inside, the light swallowed up inside of a long, cramped hallway. I crouch on the creaky wood of the wardrobe to get a closer look. It’s clean inside, the floor and walls made of bolted scrap metal. The air is almost sour.</p><p>My boot-heels clank as they settle on the metal floor, a deep and full sound. On the wall beside me there is a circular switch. I twist it, and caged lights flicker to life along the hallway’s ceiling. I reach behind me and close the wardrobe, afraid that something might follow me. I’ve already determined that there is a 100% chance that there is something weird inside, but at least I’ll see it coming.</p><p>I don’t have to hunch, but there are only a few inches between me and the lights. They buzz loudly, a constant drone that makes it hard to be sure I would hear something sneaking up on me. I keep checking over my shoulder. It seems like there should be small gnats hovering against the lights, or spiders, but there’s nothing, not even webs. The hallway ends with a heavy door, flaking dark green paint reveals a rusty underside. There is a large wheel in the center. I turn the wheel and it cranks slowly, hinges screaming as it opens. Another exhale of stale air comes through the opening, heavy with dust… and light. I coil to strike, and step across the threshold.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. NONA: Part Two- Enter Magpie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hello? This is Magpie. Canary, please respond.”</p><p>I freeze, startled by the sound of a woman’s voice. I hold the railroad spike- or whatever it is- tight in my grip, flexing my fingers over it. Inside it looks like a small study, floor lamps in every corner. There are bookshelves and a filing cabinet, but there are still folders and books piled on the floor in a haphazard mess. On the wall there are pictures and charts and documents pinned to tack board. To my left, facing away, is the figure of a woman hunched over a table. In front of her is a large radio set. Her hair is gray and curled down over one shoulder. She scribbles onto the paper in front of her, a clunky pair of headphones over her ears. I move slowly closer, lowering the spike to my side. The old woman doesn’t notice me. I try to edge around close enough to see her face.</p><p>“Um…excuse me-” I start, and the old woman jumps back.</p><p>“Oh! Goodness…” She stammers, readjusting a thick pair of glasses. When she looks at me her face contorts. “You…I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? Or have I not?” She stands, grunting with the effort.</p><p>“I…I don’t think we’ve ever met. You’re Maggie Adler, aren’t you?”</p><p>She grins, seemingly amused. “I am. Who else would you expect to find at the bottom of a hole?” She extends her hand and gives me a firm handshake. “How did you find this place? Also, feel free to set down your spike, I’m sure I’m not sprightly enough to warrant it’s use.”</p><p>I set the spike down sheepishly on one of the book piles nearby. “Oh, sorry... I don’t actually know how I got here… I just woke up in the bottom of your… well. I- we didn’t know you were alive, we thought that-”</p><p>“People usually don’t. I just…disappear, up here. Most visitors to the Island leave me alone.” She shuffles over to a small kitchen area. “Tea?” she asks, flicking on an electric kettle.</p><p>“Uh…sure. Thanks.” I find a chair and sit down in it.</p><p>“So. You were saying that you didn’t know I was alive? Suppose I’m better at hiding than I thought.” She giggles a little, sitting back down at the swivel chair next to the desk. The chair and the desk look old; the chair’s fabric is worn and frayed, the desk heavy and metal and plain, a large block in the room.</p><p>“Have you been trapped here like we have?”</p><p>She peeks over the rim of her glasses at me. “Trapped? Trapped where, dear?”</p><p>“On…the Island? We came for our high school trip but it’s just the five of us. We’re trapped in this freaky nightmare loop by <em>ghosts</em>…I know that sounds crazy, and…probably doesn’t make sense. We found your letters, but-”</p><p>She stiffens a little. “My letters?” She stands again and hovers near the kettle, facing away from me. “What did these letters say?”</p><p>“They just…talk about what happened. To the Kanaloa, to you, to…”</p><p>“Anna. Yes, of course.” Her voice is tired. “How many did I end up writing?”</p><p>I furrow my brows. “Uh…eight, I think? At least that’s what we were able to find.”</p><p>“Hmm.”</p><p>She turns and leans her hip against the small kitchen counter, and she looks sad. “I didn’t realize I was this close…” She looks up at me and forces a smile. “I better get crackin’ on setting those up for you kids.”</p><p>“What are you talking about?” I ask. She hands me a warm, steamy cup of tea in an old mug, then sits down with her own hot cup of tea, lifting and sinking her teabag, almost as if in a trance. “I’m sorry, Nona. I thought I had more time. I wish I had just…a little more time.” She breaks from her trance and smiles at me. “It sounds like you have the opposite problem.”</p><p>Her smile is warm, inviting, but I feel my body go cold to the bone.</p><p>“I never told you my name. How do you know my name?” I’m still holding the mug of tea. Although the cup is now fiercely hot, I can’t seem to unclench my fingers wrapped around it. “I knew it. This is just more of the Sunken messing with me, you’re not really here.”</p><p>“No, I’m not.” She reaches over and takes the cup from my hands, sore with heat. “I’m sorry that this happened to you. You shouldn’t have to pay for the mistake I made over fifty years ago.”</p><p>While she talks, I eyeball the doorway, wanting desperately to leave.</p><p>“I know you’re afraid. I know that none of this makes sense, but…please. Help them. All of them. Francis…and Anna…” Her voice trails off. “I had hoped… that I would have enough time to see them again, once this was all over.”</p><p>My legs are poised to run, the muscles tense. “Tell me how you know my name.”</p><p>Maggie Adler dabs the corner of her eye with the hem of her grey cardigan. “I know that…right now I’m a stranger to you. But for me you’ve become... something of an old friend.”</p><p>“We’ve never met. Until now I didn’t even know you were <em>alive</em>.”</p><p>“We have. You have been a great presence in my life, though I didn’t understand for a long time what you were. To be honest, for a long time I thought you were a ghost, or an angel, but… I am sorry that, for me, this will be the last time we speak, and for you the first. I suppose I had hoped to say goodbye to you in a way that matters.”</p><p>She opens up a cabinet and removes a stationary box. It’s the same paper that her letters around the Island are written on. The box is unopened, all the pages blank.</p><p>“I haven’t written those letters yet, Nona. I bought these only a few days ago.”</p><p>I stand slowly and back up from her. “You’re messing with me. None of this is real.”</p><p>“I’m not trying to mess with you. I’m really not, please believe me. I don’t think I could stand it if you hated me, right at the end.” Her mouth is pursed tight, lips pulled in and trembling. She reaches her hands out as if to grab mine, and stops herself, pulling them back into her lap. “I’m not ready to die, Nona. I thought I could see her again. I thought that you would be able to help me save her in time, to bring her home to me.” Tears flow between the creases of her face, falling into tea, forgotten. “Tell her I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to save her. I’m sorry that I didn’t follow her.” Maggie smiles softly. “Even when we were kids, she was always faster than me. Braver than me. I couldn’t keep up.”</p><p>“I’m sorry that that happened to her, and to you, but… I can’t change anything. I can’t ‘fix’ whatever this is. I’m failing math and science; I don’t understand this stuff. I just want to go home, and be with my grandfather, and forget this ever happened.”</p><p>Maggie’s eyes squint and widen with a realization. “Your grandfather…” Suddenly the room let’s off static, making the hair on my arm stand on end.</p><p>“We’re out of time.” Maggie quickly takes me by the shoulders, startling me. “Nona, find the letter nine, when you’re back in your own time, find-”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. JONAS: Well-Wishers Part 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Alex vanishes into the dark, only the light of her phone flashlight visible, steadily getting smaller. Jonas keeps a tight grip on the rope, part of his mind anxious that the rope will tear any second. Around him the air gets chillier, the wind soft but reaching straight through his hoodie. There is a chorus of crickets sounding, and small fireflies float lazily nearby and then vanish without a trace.</p><p>“Alex? Hey, how’s it going down there?” He calls.</p><p>“I think…yep, this is the bottom. Oh, <em>gross.</em>”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“It’s like, all sludge in here, it’s…an interesting smell.”</p><p>“Looking forward to it. I’m coming down.”</p><p>At the base of the well there certainly is an interesting smell: decaying leaves and Wet. Jonas’s shoes squelch in the soft ground and he grimaces. He moves his flashlight around, and it reflects harshly back at him from a broken mirror leaning against the wall.</p><p>“Oh, neat. Love my broken mirrors in the bottom of wells. I wonder who did the interior decorating?”</p><p>“Yeah, no kidding. Look.” Alex whispers to him. He turns and sees the wardrobe. Its frame is solidly built, with ornate details in its side paneling and (once) silver handles. Its surface is muddy and scratched, the wood all but dripping in places from age and neglect.</p><p>“Let me guess, you want to open that? <em>Literally</em> could be skeletons in that closet.” Jonas replies. Alex reaches forward towards the handle and Jonas sighs, pulling lightly at her shoulder. “Actually, this is a Supervisor duty; it’s beyond your pay grade.”</p><p>Alex rolls her eyes. “That’s why they give you the big bucks. Open it, then.”</p><p>The door is loose on its hinge and opens without difficulty. Inside it’s pitch black. Jonas shines his light inside and sees into a long hall. “What the hell…” He crawls in. There is a switch on the wall, but it only clicks, leaving the hall dark. “I guess that was a long shot. Even if this did work, I can’t imagine anyone’s footing the bill.” Alex crawls through after him, both of their lights revealing a faint outline about 40 feet ahead.</p><p>“God, this reminds me of Fort Milner.” Jonas murmurs, and his voice echoes softly around them. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, his ears straining for any sounds other than their shoes making dull <em>thunks</em> against the floor.</p><p>“Maybe this was like, a secret base for Fort Milner… Maybe this is where we find out more about what happened to the Kanaloa.” Alex suggests.</p><p>“Or it’s a trap. You know. Just trying to keep an honest perspective.”</p><p>“I don’t think so...that voice in the cave was weird, it didn’t feel like the Sunken.”</p><p>“Who else would it have been? They want to leave this Island as much as we do. But with more body-snatching.”</p><p>“I guess...but they’ve never called Maggie Adler “Magpie” before. It sounds like a nickname, maybe, or a callsign, but the Sunken don’t really have those kinds of memories anymore, do they?”</p><p>“I don’t know. I’m guessing we’re here to find out.” In front of them they can see that the doorway is open into another dark space, the heavy metal door shifted over to the side, rusted flakes scattered on the floor.</p><p>The beam of Alex’s flashlight is unwavering as it points through the opening. Heavy particles of dust float almost suspended in the stale air of the space, the light glinting off of the edge of a heavy metal desk and an old desk chair. Behind those is a large tack board of pictures, maps, and papers. Jonas takes a slow, measured step inside, Alex close behind him. He turns his beam to look into other parts of the room. He jumps when the beam crosses over a large, still form on the ground.</p><p>“Holy shit, it's Nona! Alex, hold this,” Jonas says, handing over his flashlight to her and approaching Nona’s body. He leans over to look at her face, and her eyes are ebbing with a bright turquoise glow.</p><p>“Is...That’s not normal,” Jonas says, “But we shouldn’t try to wake her, let her ride it out. I don’t understand, why are her eyes glowing a different color all of a sudden? Is it just more ‘final loop’ stuff, do you think?” Jonas questions.</p><p>“Her eyes are <em>what</em>?” Alex moves closer and crouches on Nona’s other side. Nona is mumbling incoherently, lost somewhere else. Her body is letting off the same turquoise light, instead of black. Alex and Jonas watch her for another ten minutes, and then Nona stirs, glow fading away. She jolts in Jonas’s arms.</p><p>“Woah! Nona, it’s okay, it’s just us.” Jonas soothes, Alex hovering.</p><p>“What happened to you, Nona?” Alex asks, at the same time Jonas asks, “How are you feeling?” Nona looks between them, then puts a fist to her head. “My head hurts more than usual…I don’t know if I can stand up.”</p><p>“That’s okay, don’t worry about it.” Jonas says with a good-natured grin. Alex nods in agreement, but she seems distracted.</p><p>“I…I met Maggie Adler.”</p><p>“What? How?” Alex questions, getting on one knee next to Nona.</p><p>“I’m... not one hundred percent sure? But I was in the past. <em>Her</em> past. She told me that she’s met me before, like, throughout her whole life. And she said that I’m somehow involved in this, this whole Island thing that’s going on? She was about to tell me something, but I can’t remember...” Nona takes a moment to rub her fists into her eyes. “She said that she was sorry that she couldn’t ‘finish what she had started.’ I’m guessing she meant the order to fire on the Kanaloa by mistake.”</p><p>“And she expects you to…do what?” Alex asks.</p><p>“I don’t know, she says that I have to finish it for her, that she doesn’t know why but I’m supposed to be able to change things. Before I was pulled back she said something about my grandfather, and that I needed to find the ninth letter.”</p><p>“Ninth letter? Where did she leave it?”</p><p>“I…I don’t know. I was pulled out too fast, I didn’t have time to ask.” Nona reaches out for Jonas to help her up. “I feel like she would have left it here somewhere. Where’s the light?”</p><p>“It doesn’t work.” Jonas says.</p><p>“But… the lights worked in the memory. It couldn’t have been more than a month ago that I saw her.”</p><p>“Well, if she wanted to keep this place secret, she wouldn’t want her inheritors to find out about an energy bill for a well bunker.” Alex notes. Jonas hands a flashlight to Nona.</p><p>“Let’s look around then, see what we can find.” Jonas starts with the metal desk, while Alex and Nona start going through file boxes. On the desk is a large radio system; lots of flick-switches, buttons, dials, speakers…<em>Everything one needs for a well-radio.</em> Jonas thinks. He peers behind the radio to see if anything is taped or stuck to the back, and under the desk. There are cabinets attached. Jonas rattles them, but they stay locked.</p><p>“Maggie Adler didn’t happen to tell you where the keys are to this, did she?” Jonas asks.</p><p>Nona, who is rummaging through one of the many stacked boxes on the other side of the room, shakes her head. “No. She just said to look for the ninth letter.”</p><p>“What, lockpick-master Jonas can’t get it?” Alex scoffs turning her attention to the tack board.</p><p>“Don’t- Ugh, Alex they’re <em>entirely </em>different kinds of locks.”</p><p>“Are they though?”</p><p>“…Probably. They’re a lot smaller!”</p><p>“Something you have in common then,” Alex giggles. Jonas can see Nona grinning secretly in the corner.</p><p>“Alex, that’s gross. Also, not true, just in case anyone was wondering.”</p><p>“We were not,” Nona chimes in. While Jonas is not a great fan of being the object of ridicule, he is a fan of Nona becoming more a part of the team, feeling comfortable around them. Although less fun for him, razzing seems to be a popular bonding activity within the group.</p><p>“Well…either way, I don’t think I have anything with me small enough to try picking it.”</p><p>“Here, will this work?” Alex reaches under her ponytail and hands him a small, sharp bobby pin.</p><p>“Hmm…maybe. I’ll give it a shot. Any luck with you guys?”</p><p>Alex sighs, shining her flashlight up at the board. “Not yet. Her organization process leaves much to be desired. Her mind must have been a pretty complex place. There’s at least twelve of those file boxes, not to mention the bookshelves. On this board she has all of these pictures and graphs and scribbled notes.”</p><p>“Are any of them the letter we’re looking for?”</p><p>“I don’t think so, none of them are like an envelope or say ‘Dear Nona’ on the top, but they’re all…coded.”</p><p>“Coded? Like, Morse Code?”</p><p>“No, they’re just small letters. ‘C’, ‘X’, ‘D’ ‘I’, ‘L’, ‘V’, ‘M’…They’re everywhere on here, somewhere on each page and picture. All in different orders, like they each represent something, but I don’t know what. Maybe another radio thing?”</p><p>“Wait, let me see that.” Jonas stands up from his crouch by the desk, shining his light over the board beside Alex. Just as she said, in the corners of every page, graph, and photo is a small red series of letters stamped together.  </p><p>Jonas raises an eyebrow. “It’s Roman Numerals. Wait, Alex, you don’t know Roman Numerals?”</p><p>“What the hell are Roman Numerals?”</p><p>“Oh. Wow. The school systems in America really are failing us.” Jonas muses with a theatrical sigh.</p><p>“They’re<em> Roman</em>! They can’t possibly be that relevant!” Alex’s face flushes with embarrassment.</p><p>“How the <em>hell</em> are you seventeen and never seen Roman Numerals!?” Jonas laughs, grinning when Alex shoves her shoulder playfully against his.</p><p>“Whatever. Then just tell me what they say.” Alex huffs, crossing her arms over her chest.</p><p>Jonas squints back at the board. “Um…well, let’s see here…”</p><p>“You can’t read them, can you?”</p><p>“Yes, I can Alex! Just… not the really high-level ones, they’re… complicated.”</p><p>“Don’t lecture me on not knowing them if you can’t even <em>read</em> them!”</p><p>“I can read some of them! This one is…eleven, this one is sixteen, this one is four, and that one is twenty-three.”</p><p>“They’re on these, too.” Nona holds up a file folder. “Every page has a number stamped on it.”</p><p>Alex groans. “Great, so she <em>does</em> have an organization system. But how is that going to tell us where the ninth letter is, if it even <em>is</em> here?”</p><p>Jonas’s face lights up. “Wait! Nona, what <em>exactly </em>did Maggie Adler tell you to do?”</p><p>“She told me to find the ninth letter, like I told you.”</p><p>“Were those her exact words? Are you sure?”</p><p>Nona looks down and thinks hard for a moment, closing her eyes. “No…You’re right. She said ‘Find the letter nine.’”</p><p>“A Roman Numeral.” Alex concludes. “Way to go Jonas! Now we just have to find…nine.”</p><p>Jonas sighs. “Which means it might not even be a letter at all. She marked everything, her papers, her graphs, her notes…All we did is make it harder to recognize.”</p><p>“I guess we have to find that nine. What does it look like?” Alex asks.</p><p>“It’s an ‘I’ and an ‘X’, in that order.”</p><p>“Well…this was important to her, so first places to look would be on the tack board or anywhere in the open, she probably wouldn’t have hidden in in one of these boxes. With the other letters she kind of kept them in plain sight-”</p><p>“Helllllloooo? Guys? Are you down there?” Ren’s voice is faint and echoey.</p><p>“I’ll go get them; you guys keep looking.” Jonas says. Alex nods before he takes off back through the dark tunnel. When he reaches the bottom of the well’s opening, he can make the faint outline of a shadow leaning over the top.</p><p>“Hey, Ren! Yeah, we’re all down here.” After Jonas’s echo reaches them at the top, he hears a small scuffle and Ren saying <em>ow</em>, then a new shadow looks down towards him.</p><p>“Nona’s with you?” Clarissa asks, her voice hopeful.</p><p>“Yeah, she’s down here. Do you guys know how to scale?”</p><p>“I do, I’m not sure if brownie-for-brains does.” Clarissa remarks sassily.</p><p>Ren makes an indignant noise of complaint. “I do! We all took the same gym class, <em>Clarissa</em>.”</p><p>“Fine, then you guys can propel down here, I’ll lead you to everyone else.” Jonas calls up. Clarissa sends Ren down first, and his sneakers squeak and slip against the wet stones. Jonas can hear his stressed breathing even before he’s halfway down.</p><p>“Ren, you need to relax. I can hear you panic-breathing from down here.”</p><p>“It’s a deep well Jonas. I don’t want to break my leg knowing that it won’t get reset by tomorrow morning, thank you very much.” Ren’s dismount to the ground is less than graceful, and his face contorts with disgust when his shoes start to sink into the mud.</p><p>“You’re clear to come down, Clarissa!” Jonas calls. Clarissa’s descent is much smoother, and when her boots sink into the mud, she isn’t phased. She immediately turns her attention to Jonas.</p><p>“Where’s Nona?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. REN: The Ninth Letter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Now that they've reconvened, they have to find where to go next- there's gotta be something in Maggie Adler's bunker that can give some answers.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Nona!” Clarissa crosses the space quickly towards Nona, who is knee deep in boxes. She pulls her into a deep hug and Nona squeaks in surprise, cheeks flushing. Ren smiles, but keeps his distance. Across the space Alex has stopped investigating a tack board, her attention focused on Clarissa. She looks rigid and anxious. When Alex does see Ren, her jaw sets. In the same split second, Ren’s relieved to see his best friend and horrified about what Clarissa had told him. Some of his thoughts must have been transparent on his face, because Alex pales a little under the flashlight beam.  </p><p>“Clarissa! Are you…okay?” Nona asks, voice muffled in Clarissa’s cardigan.  </p><p>“Are <em>you </em>okay? What happened?” Clarissa questions, her hands holding to Nona’s shoulders. Once Nona explains the situation, Jonas divvy’s everyone up to find ‘IX’. </p><p>Jonas places a hand on Ren’s shoulder. “Go help Alex try to decipher the tack board over there. We need to focus on finding ‘IX’ but we should also be looking at the other stuff in here, see if we can figure out anything else.”  </p><p>Ren whines internally, but gives an exaggerated salute and ‘Yes, Sir!’ to Jonas, who lowers onto his knees in front of the heavy metal desk and wedges a bobby pin inside of a small lock opening, before approaching Alex, who is very pointedly pretending she doesn’t see him.  </p><p>“Hey,” He says. </p><p>“Hey.” </p><p>“Jonas, um...Jonas said I should come over here to help out.” </p><p>“Okay.” Alex refuses to look in his direction. Ren fights the urge to move closer to her, to push into her and have her push him back like they used to. Stuck between wanting to move closer and farther away, he settles on a light swaying motion while he looks up at the board. He let’s out a low whistle. </p><p>“This is a mess. Like, ‘Finals are tomorrow and I just started studying at 11:39 PM’ level mess. What exactly are we looking for? ‘IX’ isn’t up there?”  </p><p>Alex huffs through her nose. “No. If it was here we would have found it by now. I’m trying to make sense of why<em> these</em> specific documents were singled out, but they don’t make sense; it’s mostly high-level math stuff and then some graphs, some pictures of the Kanaloa, I think. She was still trying to figure it out, after all those years.”  </p><p>“It’s pretty depressing,” Ren murmurs. “Spending, like, forever hating yourself over something you did?”  </p><p> “You don’t think she should? Hate herself, I mean?” Alex asks, but her voice is softer. Ren’s heart tugs at him, but his stomach is still unsettled by the truth sitting between them. A truth known now only by Alex, Clarissa, and himself. A truth that, honestly, he wished he had never learned.  </p><p>“Well...no, I don’t think so. She made an honest mistake, she didn’t...<em>decide </em>to kill anyone.” His words  are deliberate, they drop like a lead ball in the air between them. It seems like she’s trying to read on his face whether or not he <em>knows. </em>She eventually gets back to looking over the board, but she isn’t really reading any of it. </p><p>“Yeah, that makes sense.” </p><p>“Hey, Alex, come over here a sec, I got it open,” Jonas says, and Ren let’s out a breath that he didn’t realize he was holding once Alex has left. Ren watches as Jonas opens the drawer and pulls out a hand-drawn map. “It’s… I don’t know what these are. More tunnels, maybe? Like the one from the well?” </p><p>Alex takes it from Jonas, eyebrows pulled together. “But it doesn’t mark exits, who knows where these tunnels lead.”  </p><p>“Hey guys, I…I think I found it.” Nona’s looking closely at a line of encyclopedias on the bookshelf. She pulls out one of the books, the roman numeral IX in gold print on its side.  “Volume nine…JAP to LAR. What are we supposed to do with this?” She opens the front cover, where, in clear block capitals, someone has written “KANALOA”. Nona hefts the heavy volume and sets it down on the desk, everyone moving in closer. Ren stands on tiptoes, trying to see over Jonas’s shoulder. Nona flips through until she finds the subheading “Kanaloa.” In the crease of the binding there is an envelope. Alex reaches for it, but Clarissa slaps her hand away. “Nona’s got dibs.” </p><p> Nona takes the letter, then sets it aside. “We should read the entry first. She wouldn’t lead us to this page without a reason.” Nona runs her finger along the encyclopedia entry. There are certain words underlined throughout the page as she reads: </p><p>“The Hawaiians held a vague belief in a future existence. They had four principal gods—Kāne, Kanaloa, Ku, and Lono—and innumerable lesser gods and tutelary deities…Priests and sorcerers were potent. On important occasions there were human sacrifices. There were places of refuge to which one might flee and be safe.” </p><p>“Human sacrifices…yikes,” Ren says with a sharp inhale, before realizing what he’s said. Alex’s breath hitches and she stiffens awkwardly. On Nona’s other side, Clarissa’s eyes are like daggers directed at Alex.  </p><p>Nona continues. “In legends and chants, Kāne and Kanaloa are portrayed as complementary powers…Kāne was called upon during the building of a canoe, Kanaloa during the sailing of it; Kāne governed the northern edge of the ecliptic, Kanaloa the southern.” </p><p>“What’s the ecliptic?” Jonas asks.  </p><p>“Oh! I actually know this one,” Ren starts, “It’s Earth’s orbit around the sun. It’s a part of the ecliptic coordinate system, which is how we figure out the positions of other stuff in space.” </p><p>“How in the hell did you know that?” Clarissa grills, crossing her arms and quipping a thin brow.  </p><p>“I…kind of got super into the idea of astral projection. You know. As a hobby. We don’t have to talk about it.”  </p><p>Nona continues. “Kanaloa is also considered to be the god of the Underworld and a teacher of magic…Legends state that he became the leader of the first group of spirits "spit out" by the gods. In time, he led them in a rebellion in which the spirits were defeated by the gods and as punishment were thrown in the Underworld.” Nona straightens and takes up the note again. Her own name, in the same block-letter print, is on the front. She takes a deep, shuddered breath, and tears open the envelope. Inside is an old photograph.  </p><p>There are four young people in the photograph: To the far left is Maggie Adler; her dark hair curled down over her shoulder, and she is dressed in a simple but flattering black dress. Her smile is broad and open. Next is Anna, who is in uniform; her hair is held back in a severe bun, and her smile is more secretive, thin-lipped. Beside her is a young man in a rich tuxedo, a white rose pinned to the lapel of his coat. His hair is slightly unkempt, his face covered in jovial freckles; on his hand, a wedding ring. Beside him is another young man, shorter in stature, with a thick jaw and a serious expression. His hair is cleanly kept, face shaven. The man in the tuxedo has an arm slung around both Anna and the other serious man, Maggie leaning in to be a part of the shot.  </p><p>“Wow…seeing Maggie and Anna’s picture on that projector at Maggie Adler’s house didn’t feel this…I don’t know. Real?” Jonas says reverently.  </p><p>“Wait, which is which?” Ren asks.  </p><p>Alex leans in closer for a good look. “I think… I think this must be Francis Salter’s wedding. Maggie mentioned it in her letters, this is the guy who was on the Kanaloa when it sank; Here’s Maggie, with the darker hair, and Anna in her uniform. And look, the man towards the middle has a ring on his hand; that must be Francis. It’s weird to see him, before he became one of the Sunken. Before he got so…lost. He doesn’t look like an angry person.” </p><p>Ren points over Nona’s shoulder. “And that super serious guy with them; who is he?” </p><p>“Carson Daily.” Nona whispers.  </p><p>“Did Maggie tell you that, in your vision?” Ren asks. Nona shakes her head. </p><p>“No. Carson Daily…he’s my grandfather.”  </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I was always intrigued by the involvement of Nona's grandfather in the game. In-game when Alex and Jonas find Nona, she tells them to stay away because she had seen Alex earlier (presumably possessed) tormenting Nona about her Grandfather. What connections exist between Nona's grandfather and Edward's Island?</p><p>I didn't do too much in depth research, but I was interested in what exactly "Kanaloa" may have meant to the creators of Oxenfree. I believe that the details I point out within the story are most relevant to the story I'm trying to tell, however I have copied the links below if anyone wants to look into it more.<br/>(https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hawaiian#ref273656) <br/>(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic) <br/>(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanaloa)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. CARSON</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>These old bones…they don’t work like they used to.</em> His arm reaches out to the side to push down on the blaring alarm clock, the skin looser, the veins darker. He pulls the lamp cord, the clock-face glowing at 0200. The silence afterwards only gets worse, year by year, but he knows better than to look at the empty space beside him, where the mattress dips into an imprint of Mae. He should get a new mattress, he tells himself. This one isn’t good for his back. He sits up slowly, the joints stiff and the bones sore.</p><p>“Tomorrow,” he says to himself. Always tomorrow.</p><p>The house is quiet, without Nona there. He already misses hearing her footfalls on the floor above him, soft music playing while she gets ready for school, or even the sound of her window creaking open when her friend Clarissa sneaks into the house. He’s thought often about discipling her over it, but since Mae passed, he can’t seem to find any reason to bring those things up. In the end, they’re trivial things. Small enough not to worry him, small enough to not be worth mentioning. Life’s too short.</p><p>The bathroom light buzzes dimly. He takes his medication bottles from the mirror-cabinet and swallows the pills with palmfuls of sink water. <em>Don’t understand why this medication can’t work just as well at 08</em>, he muses, only a little bit agitated. On the counterspace beside the sink are Nona’s things: brushes, barrettes, a toothbrush, her pill container.</p><p><em>She left her medication here...but she’ll be alright. She’s only there for the night</em>, He consoles himself. At 1100 hours he will pick her up from the ferry, he can bring her meds to her then.</p><p>He thinks every day about that Island, but suddenly it feels so much closer to him, so much more tangible in his memory. Suddenly the events that transpired there don’t feel like a window to a past life. He’d heard the news, of course, about Maggie. She had sent him one last letter, though he can’t figure out how she knew it would be her last. The letter lies in his drawer with his other talisman. His steps are slow, the floorboards groaning beneath him. In his bedroom he opens the wardrobe drawer and picks up the other talisman, a small felt box. His thumb rubs over the surface, as it has done for half a century, a ritual of remembrance. He opens the lid delicately, looking on the medal inside, and the inscription below it:</p><p>
  <em>“Awarded to Francis William Salter, for his service and bravery aboard the U.S.S. Kanaloa.”</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. CLARISSA: Down the Rabbit Hole</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Clarissa's lack of tact usually doesn't pose much of a problem for her...</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You know, now that I think about it…how did a 70-year-old lady get down here? Or out? Wait, how are <em>we </em>getting back out? I’m not good at sports, or like, rock-climbing.” Ren says, pacing across the small space. </p><p>“Guess you’ll be stuck down here,” Clarissa says flippantly. <em>Dare to dream</em>.  </p><p>“Don’t even joke about that!” </p><p>“Guys,” Jonas interrupts. “Ren makes a good point, there’s no way Maggie Adler got down here the same way we did.” </p><p>“Where are we even going to go?” Clarissa blows hair out of her face and puts her thumbs through her beltloops. “As far as I’m concerned, Nona’s here, we’re all here, we should leave. Maggie’s boat is available and I’m sure she won’t mind us borrowing it.” <em>How am I the only one trying to get us off this goddamn Island? </em> </p><p>“But what if that doesn’t work, Clarissa? We can’t take any chances,” Alex protests. </p><p>“That stupid triangle said that all we had to do was find Maggie. We did that, thanks to Nona. There’s no follow-up clue, no sign, nothing.” </p><p>Nona shakes her head. “Clarissa, she knew who I was. She said she had known me her whole life, but I’ve only met her once. That means that I’m going to end up going back again.” She pauses, looking back down at the photograph. “I think this picture was taken here, on the Island. Maybe if we go stand there, in that same spot, I can try to communicate with her again.” </p><p>Clarissa bites down sharp words, dulling them in her throat before talking again.  </p><p>“You shouldn’t have to do any of this.” </p><p>“I know,” Nona murmurs. “But...my grandfather never told me that he was stationed here, at Fort Milner, let alone that he knew Maggie Adler. Why would he keep a secret like that?” </p><p>“Maybe the memory of what happened to Francis was too much for him. All four of them look close in the photo.” Jonas suggests. </p><p>“Maybe...but, does that mean he <em> really </em> knew what happened on the Kanaloa? Did he know about the Sunken?” </p><p>“Why does that matter?” Clarissa groans. “All of that happened a long time ago.” </p><p>“It matters to me, Clarissa!” Nona snaps. Clarissa is taken aback, and can’t bring herself to speak out again. Nona had never raised her voice at Clarissa before; it’s like a slap across the face. </p><p>“Okay. Fine.” Clarissa crosses her arms over her chest, her nails drumming against the fabric of her cardigan. Jonas is the one who animates the conversation again.  </p><p>“Alright, then we need to get you there, Nona. Where is the picture taken?” Jonas asks. Nona puts the picture closer under her flashlight. In the background of the four friends, there are many people in variations of formal dress and uniforms. There are ribbons and tables with cloths over them and small vases with wildflowers set on top.  </p><p>“It looks like it’s inside a large room, and there’s a staircase behind them.” Nona announces. </p><p>“That would be Fort Milner, though admittedly less dark and haunted. Couldn’t Maggie lead us to somewhere, I don’t know, less horrible and creepy?” Jonas groans. Clarissa feels a chill down her neck at the thought of it. Flashes of falling from the window, of being hung, of broken bones and sinew... </p><p>“Well, we sure aren’t going anywhere standing around like this,” Clarissa says, flipping her hair back with an irritated hand. “There’s probably a door or something in here, but it’d have to be easy enough for someone a million years old to open.” </p><p>“So... the bookshelf? Like in movies?” </p><p>Jonas and Alex take on the task of investigating the bookshelf for a button or a lever. <em>O</em><em>r whatever other Bugs Bunny kind of shtick they thi</em><em>nk </em><em>they </em> <em> 'll </em><em>find there</em><em>, </em>Clarissa thinks sardonically. However, much to her annoyance, Jonas quickly discovers the hatch that separates the shelf from the wall, and beside it is one of the radio locks. After some meddling with the larger radio, Alex is able to unlock it, revealing a dark tunnel-space. Jonas tries to shine a light down it, but it’s swallowed by the dark. The light flashes against two long metal rails racing into the dark, and the yellowed glass of an old oil lamp, abandoned on the tracks in front of them. The tracks aren’t large, and neither is the tunnel space. The wood slats are corroded by time and the metal is orange with rust.  </p><p>“The mining tunnels. That’s how she got down here- these tunnels go through the entire Island,” Alex says, “That map Jonas found might be our guide.” They collect their things and enter the tunnels. Jonas gives Nona a walkie talkie. “Just in case we get separated again,” he tells her.  </p><p>The tunnel doesn’t seem to have an end. All their footsteps <em>thump </em>over the wood slats, letting off resounding echoes that trip over each other in the air. After much consoling Nona let Jonas put the heavy Encyclopedia in his bag, but she refuses to hand over the photo. Multiple flashlight beams rock back in forth in front of them. While the map gives details of the tunnel pathways, it does not give any indication of where the tunnels lead, which Clarissa classifies as another reason to hate Maggie Adler.  </p><p>“So…all of this is super weird, right?” Ren says, trying to fill the void of silence.  </p><p>“Duh. What’s your point?” Clarissa clips, and rolls her eyes even though no one can see it.  </p><p>“Well…doesn’t this whole thing seem a little…<em>elaborate </em> ? I mean, a wardrobe at the bottom of a well, a secret bunker with all that stuff in it, or, you know, <em>magic radios- </em>” </p><p>“They’re not magic, Ren. Obviously.” </p><p>Ren throws up his hands. “Whatever! And I mean, Nona too, now she has like, a “destiny” or whatever, and her grandfather is somehow involved in this…whatever this is. This is a real-life conspiracy horror flick and you all seem, I don’t know, fine with it?” Nona doesn’t respond, and radiates discomfort. </p><p>“Well, as we’ve said before Ren, we’ve done this at least a hundred times, so. It’s a little hard to be surprised by it anymore.” Clarissa says with a biting tone. The group falls into silence again, only their heavy steps resounding around them. Nona slows down next to Clarissa, both of them falling back a little bit behind the rest of the group.  </p><p>“I…I’m sorry for snapping at you, Clarissa. Back in the bunker. It wasn’t fair.” Nona murmurs. Clarissa keeps her eyes directed ahead.  </p><p>“No, it wasn’t.” Her tone is a little harsher than she intends, so she tries to soften it. “But…I get it. And I’m sorry. I just want to get you home safe.”  </p><p>Nona’s face turns up to Clarissa, and her eyes are warm again. “Thanks. I just…I feel like everything I knew has gone sideways. You’re the only thing that makes sense here.”  </p><p>“That’s quite the pick-up Non’,” Clarissa teases, and Nona’s cheeks inflame.  </p><p>“What! No, I didn’t- that’s not what- I <em>just mean </em>that I’m glad you’re here.”  </p><p>Clarissa smiles. “It’s alright, no need to be embarrassed; I’m basically irresistible.” Her tone is light, but Nona doesn’t laugh.    </p><p>“Hey, I was just teasing. I know you don’t feel that way,” Clarissa amends. Nona nods, but doesn’t say anything else. Nona moves ahead of Clarissa again, eyes cast down. <em>Jeez, she’s so touchy tonight</em>, Clarissa thinks, but her chest pangs with a tiny- <em>miniscule</em>, even- itty bitty sense of guilt for teasing Nona. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. JONAS: Open Doors</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Jonas and Nona have a chance to bond.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>TRIGGER WARNINGS and SPOILERS in end notes. (If you're squeamish, you might want to check.)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The tunnels are a labyrinth. With only a hand drawn guide, without any helpful details, Jonas can only guess at what direction they should go in. He doesn’t even know the Island that well, but Alex seems too freaked out to take charge. The entire night it’s felt like she’s been distracted, or like there’s something on the very tip of her tongue that she keeps biting back. Ren, too, ever since they split up, has been uncharacteristically distant. Clarissa started the night on a bad note, and now Nona has had a huge new set of variables added to her otherwise neutral vibe. Jonas might not be book smart, but he’s learned how to pick up when someone near him is about to snap- you have to know those things in Westedge. And right now, it seems like each of them are at a breaking point. </p><p>“I think…yeah, there should be an exit coming up, straight ahead,” Jonas announces.  </p><p>“Love the confidence, big brother,” Clarissa scoffs. Jonas bites down on a colorful remark. <em>Focus. Just get everyone out of here. Just get this righ</em><em>t. </em>  </p><p>When they reach the end of the tunnel there is a short ladder leading upwards with a crank wheel. Jonas takes on the ladder first, turning the wheel until it swings up and a rush of night air breathes into the mine. High above him, rather than the night sky, is a large fixture of metal and rivets and groaning joints. He helps pull the rest of them out. </p><p>“It’s Harden Tower,” Alex muses. Jonas runs down towards the fence and throws a stick at it, which sizzles violently before dropping to the ground.  </p><p>“We’ll have to shut the electric fence down manually, from the top of the tower,” He calls. </p><p>“I’ll go with you, Jonas,” Nona volunteers, as Jonas reconvenes with them. “I think…I don’t know, maybe being in the places Maggie was in can trigger something. She used to work up in the tower.”  </p><p>Jonas nods. “Worth a shot; the rest of you wait here, we’ll just be a few minutes.” For a second, he thinks Alex might protest, but she just nods curtly and leans back against one of the tower’s legs. The temperature around Ren, Clarissa, and Alex drops to subzero in an instant.  </p><p>“Um…everything okay, guys?” He asks. </p><p>“It’ll be a lot better once you get us out of here, so. Hop to it,” Clarissa retorts. Jonas purses his lips. “…Alrighty then. Be back soon.”  </p><p><em> God, the amount of cardio I’ve done on this Island</em><em>. </em>Jonas thinks grumpily as he once again has to scale the entire height of the tower. He has Nona go up first; he isn’t sure exactly what he can do if she’s possessed mid-ladder, but he hopes that he can do something to prevent her from plummeting to her death.  </p><p>“So…Nona. How, um. How are you doing with…everything?” Jonas asks as they step onto the first platform.  </p><p>“You mean my grandfather knowing Maggie Adler without saying anything, or about my time-travelling powers? Or do you mean my ‘destiny’ to fix the Island?” </p><p>“Uh…All of the above, I guess.” </p><p>“I don’t know. Before this stupid trip everything made a lot more sense. I’m not really into this savior stuff, that’s more Alex’s thing. I don’t like being in charge of things, I don’t like having to figure out solutions, I just…prefer to float, you know? And now there’s this huge stage light pointed on me to do something and I just…Maggie made a mistake. It shouldn’t be me.” </p><p>“Is that why you get along so well with Clarissa? Because she likes to be in charge of, like, everything?” </p><p>Nona goes quiet, not responding to his question right away. “I don’t know, maybe? It’s just…she’s Clarissa. I don’t know.”  </p><p>“Hmm. You might be the only one that can get close to her like that.” </p><p>Nona exhales heavily. “Not that close.”  </p><p>“You should have seen her, when you went missing. She kind of went ballistic. You mean a lot to her.” </p><p>“Not as much as- never mind. It’s not important.” Nona’s pace up the steps quickens, and Jonas drops the conversation. At the top of Harden’s tower, Jonas settles himself in front of the locked door and pulls out a library card from his wallet. Nona shifts from foot to foot anxiously behind him.  </p><p>“Jonas, have you, um. Have you ever been in love?” Nona blurts and Jonas’s hands stall a second.  </p><p>“That’s uh, a bit unexpected from you, Nona,” He half laughs. </p><p>“I- just, have you?”  </p><p>Jonas smiles to himself. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. I pretty much kept to myself and Westedge people didn’t really hold much appeal for me. I dated this one person, but we never clicked on that real level, you know? Just… wasting time together. Is there some…special redhead in your life? Or... whatever. What do I know, I’m just the library card guy.” Jonas looks behind him to find Nona’s face beet red. “Nona, you don’t have to say anything, just…it’s okay. It’s okay to feel that way, even about a person as much of a pain as...<em> someone </em> can be.” Nona turns away to look over the railing, starlight catching in her dark hair.  </p><p>“But what if…<em> someone </em> …doesn’t feel the same way?  If they’re closed off and still hurting over someone else, I… What if she isn’t even, you <em>know</em>…” </p><p>“Gay?” Jonas suggests candidly. “Well, I like to think that everyone has that door open a <em>little</em>. At least. Who knows, <em>someone </em> could be. Won’t know unless you ask. But hey, door’s open. The literal one, I mean, not the gay one.” Jonas says, standing up. “And, about her hurting…she’ll have to work that out on her own. But she might always love Michael, just a little bit. That doesn’t mean she can’t love you. Though it’s hard for me to imagine her in love with anyone, she’s uh…she’s a lot. Not bad! Just. You know.” </p><p>“I know. Thanks, Jonas.” Nona pushes away from the railing, a melancholic smile on her lips. She’s about to head into the tower when a large, black shadow is manifest behind her. Jonas’s heart drops into his stomach. He reaches out his arm, and his fingers graze the wool of Nona’s sweater before she is ripped from the tower by the shadow’s claws. Those eyes…they’re nothing more than red orbs, but Jonas looks right in them, and feels the weight, the pits of eyes sunken within. For a moment time is suspended. Nona’s falling in slow motion, her eyes wide with surprise, fear creeping in. Then time resumes, and Nona drops like a rock onto the hillside below. Her body smacks wetly against one of the legs of the tower as she goes down, cracking her skull and spinning her out onto the grass.  </p><p>“Shit. <em>Shit </em> .” Jona s throws a hand over his mouth and turns away from Nona’s mangled form. <em>Your fault.  </em>His brain insists. His blood thrums in his ears. He waits for screaming down below, for the others to see her and panic. When nothing more happens, he sucks in a breath and dares to look down…and Nona’s gone. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Trigger Warning: Main character death and gore. Just like with the game, the sunken sometimes cause the oxenteam to "die". I have that in this chapter with Nona, and it has more gore than I usually do. This chapter and the next will be more graphic in terms of death, but Nona's death is not permanent.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. NONA: Cards on the Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Sunken have forced Nona through time, to the site of the Original Sin.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It doesn’t quite hit me until I see Jonas’s face. I feel myself being pulled off of the tower, my ankle banging painfully against the railing. There’s something cold around me, even colder than the night air, colder than the metal of the tower, colder than anything. When my eyes turn above me the stars are gone, the moon split into two red points of light that rush on me as I fall. The Sunken are somehow pushing me down, so that I’m not only falling but being forced through the air. I want to cry out but there are claws curling around my lungs. Somehow, even before I’ve hit the ground, I remember the sensation of my head slamming against the tower, and there are phantom pains throughout my arms and legs like I have already broken them. It feels like I fall and hit the ground, again and again, like a toy or a sock in the teeth of a dog. I never see it happen, all I see is the Sunken bearing down on me, enveloping me in their sticky darkness. I have never touched or been touched by them before. It’s like tar, or molasses, thick and suffocating and <em>cold </em>… </p><p><b> <em> “ </em> </b> <b> <em> SEE.THE </em> </b> <b> <em>  BEGINNING. THE ORIGINAL SIN. SEE. AND. REMEMBER. </em> </b> <b> <em> ” </em> </b>  </p><p>*** </p><p>My lungs fill with cold air, unobstructed by the Sunken’s weight. My body is almost alienatingly still, and grass brushes the tips of my ears and cheeks. My eyes blink open and meet sheets of grey clouds high above. When I sit up my head swims with aching, and my stomach fills with the distinct desire to throw up. <em>It’s okay, Nona, don’t throw up, don’t throw up</em><em>. </em>Once my head and stomach realign, I look around me. I’m on the ground by Harden Tower, dwarfed by its height; it’s clean, unburdened by rust. Above me the sky is blanketed by light grey clouds, but they’re backed by twilight, the evening softened with the  ebbing  glow of fireflies. My stomach heats when I realize...I’m in the past again. I twist to look around me, but there’s no one. No Alex, or Ren or... Clarissa... I look up, and the light inside the tower is lit. When I stand, I rub my hands over my arms,  trying to take off the lingering sensation of the Sunken’s body on me. <em>The Sunken forced me here. Why? What was the original sin? </em> </p><p>The wind is bitingly cold. My hands lock onto cold metal rungs, the tips of my fingers numbing as I climb. My hair whips around my face in a frenzy. Fog shifts like sand across the Island, and in the distance I see Fort Milner aglow with floodlights and activity. I quiet my steps when I get close to the top of the tower, straining my ears for voices or…anything, really. My heart pounds in my ears and I’m out of breath, and the effort of controlling my breathing redirects my focus. The sky bleeds of its color around me. I dare to peek through the window and see Maggie Adler. She looks just as she did in the photo of Francis’s wedding, but now her wild, curly hair is tightened into a strict bun. I forget for a moment I’m meant to be hiding, and her head swivels in my direction. I suck in a breath, but she simply grabs a mug from the table beside her and looks back towards the radio in front of her. <em>She can’t see m </em> <em> e through the windows. </em>Although it makes me nervous, I stand, but still she doesn’t see me, the light inside the tower protecting me with its glare. <em>Am I supposed to walk in?  </em>I think, and then the radio crackles to life.  </p><p>The sound is harsh, garbled with cut off words and static and Morse code. Maggie covers one ear, eyebrows furrowing. “What the hell…?” She inputs a complicated string of morse code into the radio. Maggie is tense, fumbling with dials on the radio station in front of her. “That isn’t one of our ships...” she says to herself. The mangled transmission continues. My heart reacts immediately. <em>When is this? Is this...Is this when- </em> </p><p>Thunder rolls overhead and I jolt. Rain drops in a sudden downpour. Maggie stands abruptly and paces the room, hands pressed together like a prayer against her lips. She takes a staggered breath before pounding down on the morse code machine in front of her, face grim and set. When Maggie’s transmission is finished, something cold enters the air around me.  </p><p><b> <em> “THE ORIGINAL SIN. </em> </b> <b> <em>  EVE—TRICKED BY. THE  </em> </b> <b> <em> SNAKE. </em> </b> <b> <em> SEE </em> </b> <b> <em> . SEE. SEE.” </em> </b> </p><p>The Sunken’s broken speech presses against my ear, and my jaw clamps in terror.<em> No...no, this...this can’t be when she... </em>The weight of their words sinks into the pit of my stomach, and I slam a fist against the window. Maggie screams and knocks the morse code machine off the desk. Lightning flashes behind me. <em>She can’t make the order, she can’t- </em> </p><p> </p><p>***  </p><p><em> October 25, 1943. </em>  </p><p>Maggie screams when she hears the noise: A resounding, unnatural, and unexpected <em>thump </em>against the glass window on the Tower door. The telegraph sounder flies off the desk when she knocks it over in her fright. The lighting flashes, and the silhouette of a girl stands against the crashing light.   </p><p>“Nona?” The word is soft, crossing what feels like an impossible barrier, carrying to this girl, this phantom, that has followed her through time. Nona’s expression vanishes with the darkness, and Maggie feels stuck, wanting to open the door, but to open it is to acknowledge what she has avoided her entire life, a knowledge that the universe is irreparably unknown and unknowable. The doorknob rattles. Maggie’s mind seems to be lost in a sea of cotton, the sounds around her unrefined. Somewhere far away, the radio comes to life, a transmission from the USS Walter Roy in tense, animated code. The outline of a hand slams against the glass. “MAGGIE, STOP THE ORDER. STOP THE ORDER!” Nona’s small, frightened face is in a half light, snapping into and out of vision. Her voice is shrill, the rain flattening her hair like she’s drowned.  </p><p>“What?” Maggie says, another whisper hesitating at the barrier of the unknown.  </p><p>“MAGGIE, PLEASE, YOU HAVE TO STOP THEM! DON’T FIRE, IT’S THE-” </p><p>In the distance, a sickly green light sets off under the waves, and the force of an explosion shoots up and violently disrupts the stillness of the bay. The radio goes silent, the garbled transmission cut into nothing.  </p><p>*** </p><p><b> <em> “THE ORIGINAL SIN. </em> </b> <b> </b><b><em>EVE </em> </b> <b> </b><b><em>DECEIVED </em> </b> <b> <em> .  </em></b><b><em>BY  </em> </b> <b> <em> THE </em> </b> <b> <em> . </em> </b> <b> <em>  SNAKE.  </em> </b> <b> <em> CARDS ON THE DAY.” </em> </b> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. ALEX: Snap</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Everyone is at a breaking point, and like a hammer to glass the friendships are shattered.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It hits Clarissa the hardest.  </p><p>I’ve watched them die hundreds of times. I’ve nulled to the sense of permanency that comes with watching someone dive out of a window, or drown, or snap their neck. But Ren and Clarissa...they’ve never had to <em>watch </em> it happen. When we hear it the first time we aren’t sure what it is, but looking up again we see that it’s Nona, falling somehow faster and slower than she should be, her body thudding dully against the leg of the tower before dropping to the grass. Clarissa doesn’t even scream; she’s paralyzed, horrified, and when she finally finds her legs she’s running towards where she saw Nona fall, and Ren and I follow behind.  </p><p>“Oh my god, Nona! No, no, please...” Clarissa drops next to Nona’s broken body, blood pouring out and stagnating on the dirt. Her arm is bent at an unnatural angle under her, and one of her legs is snapped, exposing bone. I try to feel, but I can’t. Beside me Ren cries, and I... I stay. I look at Nona’s eyes, wide, and feel... nothing.  </p><p>“Do something, don’t just stand there, you have to fix her!” Clarissa screeches at me. I don’t know how to tell her not to worry, that everything will fix itself. We just have to wait. Now Ren’s looking at me too, eyes red from tears. “You...you don’t even care do you? Nona’s <em>dead</em>, Alex! ” I look at him, but I can’t seem to twist my expression into one that would make sense to him. Anguish. Fear. Anger. I can’t make any of it manifest inside of me. <em>Too many times... </em> </p><p>Clarissa gasps when, suddenly, Nona is no longer dead in front of her, but vanished into the air. I look up, and see Nona falling again, from the top of the tower. Again, her body slams against the metal and drops wetly onto the grass, almost hitting Clarissa.  </p><p>“Wha- what the hell-” Clarissa jolts back from Nona’s body, scrambling to her feet and retreating back to where I’m standing. Nona’s form glitches, again and again, sometimes dropping from the tower and sometimes just being lifted a few feet before being slammed down again. Clarissa and Ren are screaming, somewhere far away, and I wait. I wait for it to stop. It always does.  </p><p>When it does stop, Nona doesn’t come back. </p><p>Jonas is yelling from the top of the tower, but none of us can really hear him. Clarissa is the first to start scaling the ladder, and I lead up behind Ren. Ren is a little slower, his arms shaking.  </p><p>“I can’t believe you, Alex,” he says to me as we climb up the first flight of steps. I say nothing. Ren stops on the second platform and I’m forced to look him face to face.  </p><p>I sigh, feeling tired. “Look, it’s just what the Sunken <em>does</em>, Nona will-” </p><p>“What <em>happened </em> to you?” He demands, his expression pained. “One minute you’re my best friend, who I’ve known my whole life, who I’ve always trusted, who I’ve always been able to count on and now you’re this...” Ren waves his arms at me in a generalized “all of me” way. “This...callous, fucked up person.” </p><p>I freeze up. Every word he says is one that I’ve said to myself. Words that I’ve tried desperately to desensitize myself to. But hearing them from him...it makes me angry. I can feel tears pricking at the corners of my eyes and I will them to stay.  </p><p>“‘callous fucked up person?’ You want to know something Ren, you of all of us doesn’t get to judge. You choose to get high and wake up new every time, without having to hold on to any of it. You haven’t been a ‘best friend’ to me. I’ve known you my whole life, too, but you stepped out of mine when we came to this Island, when it was no longer convenient to be there for me. I couldn’t count on you. You didn’t care enough about me to stay with me through this.” </p><p>Ren sneers. “Stop. Blaming. Me. For. Not. Remembering. It doesn’t help anyone to do that, <em>you </em>choose to do this to yourself.” </p><p>“NO I DON’T.” I yell, and Clarissa pauses on the ledge above us. “YOU all get to choose. I don’t. I am forced to remember every time, and every night for the last 265 I have been forced to watch <em>you </em> , and <em>Jonas </em> , and <em>Clarissa </em>  die, over and over and over, alone.” I’m shaking, my voice hoarse. “I am forced to choose, over and over, to do what I know won’t help, but to hope it will anyway. I am forced to sit on that ferry  leading  away from the Island knowing I’ll be going  back there the second I close my eyes. I am forced to watch you, every time, tell me you don’t want to do this with me, even though you know I <em>need </em> you.” My cheeks are hot with tears and anger, and Ren juts his chin out and looks away from me.  </p><p>I scoff incredulously. “What, no snappy ‘Ren’-style comeback? Sure you don’t want to tell me again that I’m a failure, or a disappointment to you, or that I’m a ‘listless drifter ruining my own life?’” </p><p>“We’re not friends anymore.” Ren can’t look me in the eye when he says it.  </p><p>I swallow hard and try to keep the hurt out of my eyes. “What, because you don’t like me speaking up for myself? Because I’m not just going to roll over so you don’t have to inconvenience yourself by actually being a friend to me?” </p><p>“Because we don’t even like each other anymore! And because you blame everyone else for having to martyr yourself, and because you don’t care anymore if someone dies, like, right in front of you,” Ren pauses, wiping his eyes quickly. “... and because of Clarissa. An actual person.” </p><p>“Amen, Ren,” Clarissa says above us, and she continues up the tower. Ren glowers at me, daring me to say something back, but follows up behind Clarissa, leaving me alone on the platform. It takes me a long time to settle myself, and to wipe away all evidence of hurt, and follow up the rest of the tower. Jonas, Clarissa, and Ren are all inside the communications station. </p><p>“- I gave her a walkie, if she’s still...she’ll be able to tell us where she is.” Jonas says as I walk in. He looks me over and mouths, “Are you okay?”, and I give a short nod in response.  </p><p>“Nona? Nona, can you hear me? It’s Jonas.” Jonas says into the walkie. We all wait, tense for an answer, and Clarissa lets out a sob when Nona’s voice crackles to life through the receiver.  </p><p>“Yeah, I can hear you.” </p><p>“Where are you? Are you okay?”  </p><p>“I’m okay, it’s just dark. Hold on.” Nona’s voice cuts out for a moment. “Okay, yeah, I think I’m at Fort Milner.”  </p><p>“Don’t move, we’re on our way.”  </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. NONA: Through the Looking Glass</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Nona's in Fort Milner; Jonas said she should wait, but she needs to know what Maggie is trying to tell her- and about her grandfather's involvement in the events of the Kanaloa's sinking.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hit a bit of writer's block, but I got it back! Hope you guys enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I’m not surprised that the lights don’t respond to my insistent clicking on the light switch, but I do it anyway. I don’t have one of Jonas’s flashlights with me so I pull my phone out of my pocket and shake it to life, lighting up the cemented, beat down room I’m in. A large cabinet near the wall peels apart from age, and the posters on the wall are dirty. <em>Once again I’m stuck somewhere dark, alone. </em>I anticipate the panic of being locked inside, but before I can even touch the doorknob it swings open, creaking on its hinges. My breath shakes, and I take a moment to try to level myself out with deep breaths.  </p><p>Fort Milner is curiously silent. Eerily silent. No hum of electricity. No rain pattering on the roof. No echo of footsteps besides my own as I breach the doorway and see a staircase in front of me, leading down. A long, angled series of windows runs perpendicular to the stairs, letting in sparse moonlight which glints off of jagged glass. I take the picture out of my pocket. My grandfather’s face, young and stoic, looks back at me, Francis Salter’s arm around him, all smiles and freckles. </p><p>I look up from the photo, shining my phone’s flashlight but it doesn’t reach very far. My ears strain for noise, for scuffling or whispering or breathing or anything at all, but there’s nothing. I think about Jonas’s request for me not to move, to just wait for them. </p><p>“I need to know what happened with my grandfather,” I say aloud, and my voice echoes back to me as if I’m trying to convince myself to move forward, to explore this plethora of ghosts. The walls reek of mold and grime, sticky with it in some places. When I reach the floor below, I do hear small, soft echoes, voices whispering conspiratorially. My blood runs cold, and I can’t even think of which way I want to run- the sound is all around me, from every direction, but it’s most distinctive to the right of me, by the mirror.  </p><p>Alex told us about this mirror. Another version of herself appeared inside of it, and spoke to her. I feel myself being drawn to it. All I see is my own, regular reflection and the harsh glare of my flashlight. I think about Maggie in the tower, and I shut off the glare.  </p><p>I see myself, mirrored and pigmented with a ghostly blue lighting. It’s somehow me and...not me at all. The eyes aren’t quite mine. It’s hard to see much else, though maybe...the hair is different, too? The whole image is a fraction off from what it should be.  </p><p>“Hello?” I say, feeling foolish, but hitch my breath when my reflection doesn’t say it with me. One of its arms crosses over to cradle the other.  </p><p>“Your grandfather isn’t who he says he is.” the other me says, not making eye contact.  </p><p>“What?” I ask, but the other me is already gone. In her place, I see the same fort Milner hall I’m standing in, except it’s daylight, and the room looks polished and cared for, flowers and carnations and decorations covering the walls behind me. I jump when two people cross directly in front of the mirror, talking even though I can’t quite understand them. I recognize the scene immediately as Francis Salter’s wedding, and all I can hear of the people walking inside the mirror is the same strange whispering. I dare to step closer, feeling my entire body lighting with anticipation. My hand is moving up on its own, reacting to a strange impulsive curiosity, and where it should have met with the glass it simply passes through into the other side, into the light. I draw my hand back like it’s been burned, but it hasn’t. Feeling like Alice, I step through the glass into the other Fort Milner. </p><p>There’s at least fifty people downstairs below me, and I dare to peek over the railing. They’re all laughing and drinking, their dresses and suits exquisitely pressed. Some wear military uniforms, others civilian attire, but everyone enjoys everyone else. Suddenly they all turn towards the same direction and clap as Francis and a woman in a long, elegant wedding dress enter the room. Francis’s hair is red, and his laugh throws me off guard; it’s lighter than I expected it to be. He takes a moment to lift his bride’s hand to his lips and kisses it tenderly. They cut the wedding cake, and the applause continues. I see people dispersing again, some walking outside and others beginning to dance in the main room. I observe, half-crouched, worried about being seen. My eyes widen and my heart beats faster as I watch Anna, Maggie, Francis, and my grandfather pose for a photograph together. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. CARSON: The Wedding</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The flashbulb ignites. Carson's eyes blink rapidly afterward. Francis, being the way he is, is still wrapped around his shoulder, smiling at the photographer. </p><p>“They already took it, shove off,” Carson grumbles, and Francis does. </p><p>“Oh you’re no fun, Daily,” Francis pouts, his cheeks already ruddy from drink.  </p><p>“Hmm,” is all Carson says in response. Maggie and Anna congratulate Francis once again- which is only bolstering his fiery friend’s ego- before taking each other arm in arm and moving to a different part of the room. <em>It’s not natural</em>. Carson thinks, bristling with something like anxiety as he watches them leave. <em>If those two aren’t more careful... </em> </p><p>“Daily? God, you’re such an anchor clanker, can’t focus for your life ‘less you’re in the water.” Francis grabs a champagne flute from a passing waiter.  </p><p>“I take my work seriously. Can’t say that for you.” </p><p>Francis waves him off good-naturedly. “You’re not allowed to rag me today, those are the rules.”  </p><p>“Rules?” </p><p>“For my wedding? Which you are currently attending?” </p><p>“Oh, that. It’s hardly fair, you do something stupid every four minutes,” Carson scolds, but there’s a ghost of a smile sneaking into his features. Francis claps him hard on the back.  </p><p>“Please try to have some <em>fun</em>. That project you’re doing with the General- which, by the way, you still haven’t told me about-” </p><p>“Because it’s classified.” </p><p>“Yes, that one. Since you’ve started it we’ve hardly seen one another! The least you could do for me is tell me what the big project is; call it a wedding present. Or get the General to put me on the team. I hate secrets.” </p><p>“No you don’t, you just don’t like being on the outside of them.”  </p><p>“Fair enough.” </p><p>“But...” Carson pauses. <em> Francis probably could help. He’s good with some of the big idea stuff... </em> <em>  he might be a dolt but he’s a hell of an engineer. </em>However, to tell Francis about the Kanaloa project would end in a court martial, at the very least. <em>But I’m probably already set for trial, a</em><em>t this point.  </em> </p><p>“You okay, Daily?” Francis asks, taking another generous sip of the champagne.  </p><p>“Do you <em>swear </em> you can be discreet if I tell you about the Kanaloa project?” </p><p>All trace of joviality leaves Francis the longer he looks at Carson. “You’re serious?” </p><p>“Yes.” Carson’s eyes don’t break away from Francis’s, and Francis nods seriously.  </p><p>“Okay. I’m listening.” </p><p>“Not here.” Carson does a quick sweep around the room. None of the Generals or Sergeants meander nearby. Everyone is focused on celebrating, on drinking; no one notices the two young men as they climb the stairs away from the party. Carson closes the door behind him as he and Francis enter the janitorial storage room at the very top of the stairs. Something smells lightly of perfume, but Carson’s used to that- recruits usually bring girls over from the mainland for events like these, and every possible corner and secret spot is at some point commandeered by... activities.  </p><p>Francis has sobered up, but his cheeks and ears are still red from drinking. Carson’s heart pounds. He’s about to break federal law. </p><p>“What is ‘Kanaloa’?” Francis asks, keeping his voice low.  </p><p>“It’s a submarine. Named after some Hawaiian god of the sea.” </p><p>“Is that what they’re working on down at the shipyard?” Francis asks, and Carson nods in affirmation.  </p><p>“It’s set to float soon, just before the new year.” </p><p>There’s a moment of silence, then Francis clears his throat, which is probably dry from the liquor. “Why is it being kept a secret? Especially when it’s meant to be in action in less than six months?” </p><p>“The <em>official </em> launch date will be January 15th. But it’s actually going to be deployed a few weeks early, on December 28th.” Carson stops, knowing that here, this part of the conversation, is the real final barrier between his verdict landing him in jail versus execution. He presses on. “We’ve been weaponizing it.”  </p><p>Francis’s face turns in frustration. “Aren’t all subs weaponized?” </p><p>“Yes, but...this is a real game changer. This...this is a <em>discovery </em>. We’ve put a nuclear reactor in its core.” </p><p>Now Francis’s eyes bulge and he rubs a hand over his mouth. “You haven’t.” </p><p>“We have.” Carson feels more emboldened, seeing his friend’s reaction. “But I think there is so much more we can do with it. That’s why I need your help. I’m a weapons technician, but you’ve always been brainier than me. I know what it’s really capable of, but <em>you </em>could make it a reality.” </p><p>Francis keeps a hand over his mouth. “What exactly are you trying to do? Have you talked to the General about this?” </p><p>“No, he wouldn’t believe me even if I did. But this is more than the war, this is <em>science</em>. I think that under the right conditions, a nuclear reactor could...open something. But it would only ever work with a submarine. The water pressure, the heavy metal shell...” </p><p>“Are you...talking about a <em>portal </em> ?” Francis says, with a small laugh of nervous energy. “That sounds insane, how would you even know? You’re not a physicist. <em>I’m </em>not a physicist. This...no. There’s no way.” </p><p>“Imagine what that could do! Teleportation, Francis, a separate bubble of reality-” </p><p>“How the hell did you find out about any of this!?” </p><p>“I figured it out. It’s so simple Francis, and you and I, we could do it!” </p><p>“What does this have to do with the War?” </p><p>“That’s the problem. It has nothing to do with the War, but there’s no way we could have access to something like this again. The submarine could be damaged in battle, or decommissioned...we need to use this opportunity.” </p><p>“Carson...you’re talking about portals but the <em>reality </em> will be prison, or worse. What if people get hurt?” </p><p>“They won’t. No one needs to be on it except me. I’m willing to take that risk.” </p><p>“You can’t run a submarine by <em>yourself </em>.” Francis whispers tersely.  </p><p>“We can work that out later! Right now I just need you to work hypotheticals with me. Please, this...this could be huge.” Carson, usually the stoic one, is vibrating with energy. “This war...it’s nothing compared to this. The war will end eventually, and what then? We get swept out of the war effort? Get discounts for our service, keep our pins in a drawer while we don up for a low-paying job? This could make us <em> famous </em>, Francis. We won’t be worth anything once the shooting stops, but if we pull this off we could come out with some real money, we’ll have our names in books, and we can introduce an entirely new reality, American made, and the Germans wouldn’t fuck with us ever again!” Carson’s eyes are alight with passion, and it’s disheartening to see Francis so distant from him. “Do this with me. Use that brain of yours for something more than fixing up old boats.”  </p><p>Francis’s head shakes, his brows furrowed in concentration. It’s a long time before he speaks again. “I guess...it <em>could </em> be possible-” </p><p>“Yes!” Carson gives him a hard squeeze around the shoulders. “Come on, Salter, do this for us. Do this for our <em>country </em>.”  </p><p>“You don’t give a damn about the country.” </p><p>“I give a little bit of a damn. But I want this for us, for the world! I want this for the...the audacity of it! The balls of it! We’ll become <em>legends </em>.”  </p><p>Francis laughs grimly. “God, you’re so boorish most of the time, but then you get on these ideas...If I say no, what will you do?” </p><p>“Probably get myself killed,” Carson says, deadpan.  </p><p>“Oh fucking Christ...fine. But we are doing <em> hypotheticals </em>. Just having the work written out will be enough for us to get funding for a proper experiment, if we’re as smart as we think. Do you swear on your life that you will not try to do an experiment with the Kanaloa?” Francis asks, holding out a hand. Carson reaches out to take it, but Francis pulls it back.  </p><p>“I’m dead serious, Carson. I’m not going to fuck around. We do this the <em>right  </em>way, okay? Say it or I won’t help you.” Francis usually doesn’t get serious like this. His eyes, a fierce green, study Carson’s. </p><p>Carson groans internally. <em> He’ll come around, once we get close enough to a solution. No need to fight him on this now. </em>  </p><p>“I swear.”  </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>an "anchor clanker" was slang for a sailor back in the 40's; to "rag" someone meant to bother them or taunt them. </p><p>Please let me know your thoughts- I whipped out these chapters in a fit of creative mania.</p><p>Also! I am on a very brief hiatus until I've graduated. I hope to have updates sometime in early May, 2021. Thanks!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. NONA: The Wedding, Pt, 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Nona, back in time, begins to realize her Grandfather's role in the Kanaloa tragedy. Being a first-time time-traveler is hard enough, especially when the lives of 97 people depend on her ability to fix...everything.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I feel light-headed from keeping my breathing so shallow. The cabinet is tight, but at least it was mostly empty, and easy to crawl into. My hand over my mouth is sweaty, and my heart slams into my ribs. Francis’s leg can’t be more than a foot away from where I’m hiding. My grandfather goes on about his research, about what he’s found so far. I want to be sick.<em> It was his idea. </em><b><em>It was his idea</em></b><em>. </em>Francis and my grandfather leave, clapping each other on the back in good spirits. <em>I need to say something...I need to stop them from doing this.</em> I wait a long minute before crawling out from the cabinet. I don’t know how much time I have before I’m sent back to my own time, or if I can only leave by stepping through the mirror again. How do I stop them? I can’t let my grandfather see me, right? That’s like, one of the time-travelling rules, that no one you know can see you. <em>Maggie then. She said that she’s seen me throughout her life. This won’t be any different. </em>  </p><p>Thinking quickly, I take a hairband off my wrist and wrap my hair up in a tight bun, like Anna’s in the picture. I roll up my striped sleeves until they are hidden, and try to situate my sweater to look at least a little bit more like a dress. Not knowing what to do with my hat, I stuff it in the very back of the cabinet, behind empty bottles of bleach and other cleaning supplies. I pinch my cheeks so that they blush.<em> Not a great disguise</em>, I think, but there’s not a lot of options on hand. I suck in a breath and level my breathing, straightening my back and trying to pretend I belong there. From the second landing I pause, looking out on the crowd with a bird’s eye view.  </p><p>“Drink, miss?”  </p><p>I jolt, and the waiter raises an eyebrow at me, not very slick about his judgement of my strange wardrobe.  </p><p>“Uh, yes. Yes, thank you.” I smile as pleasantly as I can, and throw on my “would you like to buy some Owl Scout cookies?” charm which has lain dormant since seventh grade. The waiter leaves back downstairs. When I return my attention back to the crowd my eyes catch on Anna and Maggie talking near a punch bowl at the other end of the room. I sip at the champagne in my hand, trying not to look too rushed as I walk down the stairs. I pull my shoulders back and try to look taller than I am. My legs are jelly, nervous about having anyone’s eyes even glancing over me. I’m nervous enough just being in a<em> grocery store</em>, let alone a wedding party my grandfather attended in 1940 with the weight of almost 100 people’s lives on my conscience. It feels like someone will see me and know immediately that I’m from the future and the world will implode. I peek at Maggie from between the bodies of party goers. Those who do look at me seem confused, but are too polite to ask me why I’m dressed so casually at a wedding, or <em>what</em> I’m wearing in general. <em>Thank goodness for social niceties. </em> </p><p>Music begins to play on a phonograph in the corner of the room, and Francis and his bride move to the middle of the dance floor for their first dance. Maggie and Anna join the circle of people watching, and I see them exchange a secret glance. I feel a pang of jealousy. Soon more people enter the floor, beginning their slow waltz. I try to stick close to the wall, unseen. Maggie and Anna don’t join them, but talk idly nearby.<em> How do I do this? Has she met me yet? How will I know? </em>  I find out quickly though, because Maggie turns her head to watch the dancers and sees me, and her mouth drops into a surprised “O”. I blush; she’s very pretty, at this age, her hair wild with thick curls. She says something to Anna, who nods absentmindedly, smiling at Francis spinning around on the floor. Carson moves beside her to watch as well, and my stomach drops. <em>I can't let him see me </em>. Maggie is headed towards me, looking alarmed and awed at the same time. I back up a little bit, putting myself out of sight of my grandfather.  </p><p>When Maggie finds me again, I’m half-hidden under the stairwell, ready to make a break for the mirror. She doesn’t get too close to me, both of us mutually skittish.  </p><p>“Who are you?” She asks. Her voice sounds almost angry, but I’ve heard Clarissa speak like that before; Maggie’s afraid. </p><p>“Uh...wow, that’s hard to answer.”<em> God, is this how she felt when I first met her? </em> “My name is Nona, I-” </p><p>“You haven’t aged. At all. And your clothes...” Maggie looks me up and down, her eyes searching and nervous. “You’re real, right? Or am I just insane?” </p><p>“I’m real, but...I’m not supposed to be here. I’m...not <em>from</em> here.”  </p><p>Maggie looks behind her, making sure Anna is still focused somewhere else.  </p><p>“How are you finding me? What do you want?”  </p><p>“I don’t know if you’ll believe this, but...I’m here to-”<em> stop you from accidentally trapping the people on the Kanaloa in another dimension. </em>“ I’m here to...fix things. But I don’t know how this all works, I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say...” Suddenly I feel on the verge of panic. “I’m not particularly smart, or brave. I’m just a regular person, and I’m wayyyy out of my depth. I don’t know how to fix everything, I don’t know if I can.” Something in the way my voice shakes, or something in how I’m curling in on myself, must get to Maggie, because her eyes soften a little bit. She maintains her distance, still. </p><p>“I don’t know how to believe you,” she says softly. “What I know is that you haven’t aged, and you haven’t worn anything different, and you seem to be able to find me at strange, important points of my life. I don’t know how to accept what that means.”  </p><p>“I felt the same way, when I first met-” I stop, biting my lip. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to help. I guess... keep an eye on Francis and my Gr- Carson. They want to do something, and they shouldn’t do it. And Anna-” Maggie’s fear creeps back into her face. “Try to keep up with her. She’s impulsive, and...” I’m not sure how to put the next part, without making irreparable damage to the timeline. “Keep away from anything that says ‘See a man about a Dog.’ If you see that... just stay away. Go back. Don’t go forward.” </p><p>“What are you talking about?”  </p><p>“You’ll know it when you see it. I’m...afraid to say much more than that.” I look around her quickly, to see my grandfather starting to look around for her. “I need to leave.” </p><p>“No! Wait, please, I need to know what you are, or what you’re trying to say, its... you’re talking in<em> riddles </em>.” Maggie says, reaching out for me without actually touching.  </p><p><em> That’s rich, coming from you</em>, I think, considering how many riddles she set out for us to solve in the future. My skin itches, watching my grandfather’s eyes scouring the crowd. </p><p>“I can’t stay, I’m sorry...” I take off up the stairs, trying to not look too suspicious. I know I should say more, that I should <em>do </em>more to prevent things from happening, but I hear my grandfather closing in below me and I shoot up faster. When I get to the mirror, I see myself, with my sleeves exposed and my hair down, shabby hat clinging on.  </p><p>“Hello?” The other me says; probably the me from twenty minutes ago. What had I said before? I can’t remember. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” is all I can think of. I watch her hand move towards the glass, and my fingers graze hers before I black out. </p>
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